


Don't You Forget About Me

by hannanotmontana



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, F/M (not graphic), M/M, M/M slash (not graphic), Memory Loss, Romance, poor sherly, references to drug abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-19 12:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1470598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannanotmontana/pseuds/hannanotmontana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if John wouldn't remember anything of his life with Sherlock Holmes after their first meeting at Bart's all those years ago? What if he needs a daily reminder of who he is? And what if he serves as a daily reminder of what Sherlock has lost? [WIP, slash, kind-of-established Johnlock] Title is a song by Simple Minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

„Sherlock? Did you drug me again? I feel… dizzy.” John brings his hands up to his head and rubs his eyes, trying to stay focused. Sherlock, however, does not bother to look up from his chair across and only tells him: “You’re just tired.”

John wants to believe that, really, but usually he doesn’t feel like vomiting and screaming at the same time when he is tired. Actually, he is quite sure that no one feels like that when they are tired. Also, a penetrating pain starts throbbing on the inside of his head, as if something tries to break free from his skull. “I seriously don’t feel good-“ His attempt at standing fails miserably; he tries to grip the table but his hands slip off and he topples over, crashing on the floor.

That finally alarms Sherlock and the detective looks up, his pale eyes narrowing. John stares back, he feels his face heating up and the pain in his head becomes unbearable, specks of light danced in front of his eyes. “Sherlock!” He grunts when a bright light flashes in front of his eyes and his arms, which have supported him on the ground, give in, while, at the same moment, Sherlock jumps up from his seat and rushes over.

The last thing John feels before he loses consciousness are cool hands on his pulse point and Sherlock’s voice, heavy with emotion all of the sudden, calling out his name. Then blackness swallows him.

oOo

“Sherlock, you need to come to the Yard with me. I know you did this for John and, for God’s sake, the psycho deserved it – but you were involved in the death of this man and you need to make a statement.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lestrade. You and me know I could have prevented the death of that man and deliberately did not. What kind of statement am I supposed to make? Just do something to bail me out of the case and leave me alone. I need to stay here.”

A sigh. “I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear the first part, yes? Did he… did the guy at least tell you what exactly he did to John?”

“He didn’t say much once I had him tied and gagged. Just nonsense about me ‘wiping out his family’ and how he was going to ‘wipe out me’.”

“Then why do something to John? I mean, obviously he did cause damage to John’s brain, something about the cerebrum or whatever. But the doctor’s say he’s going to wake up again soon. So not much damage done, yeah?”

Another sigh, this time coming from the man with the lower voice. “Yes, obviously...” He sounds distracted.

Although, in John’s brain, everything they say sounds weird, so he is probably just imagining it. For a moment, he considers opening his eyes, but then his head starts to hurt and he decides that sleep is a much better idea. And that’s exactly what he does – he falls asleep again, not thinking about the pair of men talking anymore.

oOo

When he wakes up the next time, John feels great. In fact, he feels like he has slept for a great amount of time and is now completely refreshed. He feels like he should remember something, something important, but that might come to him after his first cup of tea again.

He tries to stretch a bit then, to at least warm up his bloody leg a bit before trying to climb out of his bed. The limp is always bad, but especially in the mornings. However, he finds out that his whole body feels very relaxed, in fact so relaxed that he can’t move much. That is odd. Slowly, he blinks his eyes open, only to find a pair of pale grayish ones inches away from his face.

“What-“ he tries to ask, involuntarily moving back his head a bit, pressing it into his pillow before he notices that his throat is a bit sore and his voice rough and edgy, like as he hasn’t spoken for days. Maybe he is getting sick? It sure is the time, autumn. Looks like even doctors can get sick.

And soldiers can get shot, his brain adds.

That doesn’t solve the mystery of the eyes still staring at him. When he focuses his still sleep-crusted eyes, he notices that the eyes belong to a pale face, framed by dark curls. Of course. He clears his throat and then tries to speak again, this time more successfully. “What the hell are you doing in my bedroom Sherlock?”

oOo

His heart probably misses a beat. Of course, that’s not possible, literally, but it sure feels like it.

Sherlock concentrates on John even harder than before. He’s spend the last four days contemplating every single possibility of what might happen once John woke up – because there was no reason why he wouldn’t. However, Sherlock is smart enough to not take the doctor’s injury lightly. He’s been drugged with something no-one could analyze as of yet and all they know is that there are dark spots on the scans of his brain, right where the cerebrum sits. No need to open his skull until they find out what it is – although Sherlock contemplates to do it anyway, just to take a look at it. But then again, once John wakes up, no matter in what state, he probably wouldn’t appreciate a shaved head and a giant scar from a brain surgery by Sherlock.

The detective is no fool. He knows what happens in the cerebrum of a brain. But when John finally opens his eyes after Sherlock notices his heartbeat and brain waves are becoming more active – that’s when he moves close to the doctor’s face – and calls him by his name, he feels something like relief.

“We’re not in your bedroom. You’re in hospital – have been for four and a half days now – because Sanchez’ father drugged you. Do you remember?”

A look of confusion wanders over John’s face as he alters between looking at Sherlock and the room he is laying in. Maybe inferior brains take a while longer to comprehend such information – Sherlock wouldn’t know, that’s why he doesn’t worry, but all the tension he’s been feeling for the past days and that has disappeared when John said his name, comes back when, finally, the shorter man’s eyes settle on Sherlock again and he asks with disbelief in his voice: “I have no idea what you’re talking about but I got drugged by someone JUST after I met you and agreed to look at a flat with you? What the hell is wrong with you? You’re weirder than I thought _and_ weirder than you told me!”

For a short moment, Sherlock is silent, but then he quickly moves away from the bed and presses the button for the nurse to come. Without any more words, he walks over to the door, tense and stiff and it is only when he is in the doorframe that John calls out: “Wait – what exactly happened? Tell me!”

Sherlock looks back over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. The nurse will be here any minute. I will see you again.”

“But-“

John is cut off when the door closes behind Sherlock and he makes a quick way through the hospital, hating the smell there, hating the people there, pathetic, sick people with pathetic lives and he only can breathe freely when he exits the front door and takes a deep breath of beautifully smoggy London air.

He was a fool for believing it was going to be so easy. A fool for believing a genius like Javier Sanchez would make it easy for him. A fool for letting sentiment cloud his mind.

Sanchez told him. He told him he would wipe him out. And he has. He has wiped out Sherlock Holmes from John’s brain. The whole time they have spent together. He has wiped out everything. Everything besides one thing – their first meeting, at Bart’s.

And that is the really cruel thing. He could’ve wiped out Sherlock entirely. But somehow, he managed to leave one little memory. Enough to keep John interested in him. Enough to keep him in his life. So Sherlock can face what he has lost every single day.

oOo

“I’m John Watson, I’ve got a sister named Harry, our parents are dead. I went to med school and became a doctor before I joined the army. Served in Afghanistan until I- I got shot. I came back to London to build a new life here. I live in a small flat, but I was… I met a friend of mine, Mike Stamford, and he introduced me to this man who was looking for a flat share. Sherlock Holmes, his name is.”

The doctor nods. “Good, that’s good. But do you remember anything from the past two and a half years?”

John sighs. The day has been positively mad. Ever since he woke up, people were fussing about him and a nice doctor had explained that he has been drugged and that the drug somehow affects his cerebrum, especially some memories, obviously the ones from the past two and a half years – which is crazy, really, because John can’t comprehend that he is living _two and a half years in a future_ he can’t remember even _having reached_. He just can’t believe it. It seems to be true, though.

“No, nothing. It’s just black after that. I don’t even remember… being drugged.”

The doctor, Myer is his name, scribbles down something on his notepad and John instinctively tries to read the writing upside down, though failing miserably. Finally Doctor Myer looks up. “Of course we need to run a few tests, but since there’s nothing we can do at the moment, besides watching you, you might as well leave the hospital. Of course that’s not exactly what would be best, medical-wise, but – you’ve got some powerful friends and they guaranteed for your safety and that all your needs would be looked after. So yes, home it is for you.”

John supposes he should feel thankful. Isn’t that what all patients want to hear? That they can go home? There is just one problem. “Excuse me but… where exactly is home? Is it- what the Detective Inspector said – is it… Baker Street? With Sherlock Holmes?”

Myer turns some pages. “Yes, 221B Baker Street is where you live. However, your… friend, he said it could be arranged for you to stay somewhere else if that is what you wanted. As a doctor, though, I would recommend for you to get back into an environment you know – that might possibly trigger your memories to come back to you. At least some of them.”

It’s not like he has much of a choice. If that is true, then his personal belongings will be at Baker Street, and whoever his mysterious friend is, he probably shouldn’t push the boundaries after all this person has obviously done for him. So he just nods. If he managed to live with this Sherlock Holmes for two and a half years, surely it can’t be so bad.

oOo

On their first morning, John wakes up disoriented and causes quite some trouble as he stumbles into the living room, startles a deep-in-thoughts Sherlock and demands to know why he woke up in a strange bed and how he even got there and where _there_ even was.

It takes Mrs. Hudson, Harry and Lestrade to convince John that what Sherlock tells him about them is true, because obviously John hasn’t believed a word Sherlock told him in a rather annoyed and impatient manner. From that day on, they put a note on John’s nightstand that reads:

_You are John Watson, and you live in 221B Baker Street. Your flatmate is Sherlock Holmes. You moved in with him two and a half years ago. You were drugged and lost your memories of that time, but you’re doing fine. – Greg_

Sherlock makes a face when he reads the note, but other than that leaves John alone.

And it stays that way for almost a week. A week when Sherlock doesn’t talk to John much and when John struggles to remember why he wakes up in a strange room every morning and where his cane is and how he can even live with Sherlock – the man is messy, unfriendly (if you are lucky) and sometimes doesn’t talk all day (if you are really lucky). One evening, though, John can’t take it any longer. He is not sure how much he will remember in the morning – hell, he doesn’t even remember whether he has showered already today or not – but he needs to do something.

“Sherlock? Can I… uhm, can I ask you something?”

There is no answer or any sign of recognition from the man on the sofa, currently clad in pyjama pants and a blue dressing gown, so John just continues after waiting for a moment.

“Did we get along well?”

At first John thinks Sherlock hasn’t heard the question, or is ignoring him, but then a slight shrug comes from the tall man.

“What’s the shrug supposed to mean? Were we… what? Colleagues? Friends? Strangers to each other?”

“Not were. Are. Present tense, John. We work together on cases, that’s when we came in contact with Sanchez, who drugged you. So we are colleagues. Although I do most of the work.”

John suppresses a snort. From the little things he can keep in mind, the fact that Sherlock is nowhere near modest is one of them. He returns to being serious then, though. “So… who are my friends? And am I in some sort of relationship?”

An exaggerated sigh falls from Sherlock’s lips and he folds his hands, bringing his fingertips under his chin. “You are in all sorts of relationships, John. We share a work-based relationship. Also, a private one, since we live together. You and Doctor Myer share a doctor-patient relationship-“

“I was talking about a… a romantic relationship. You’re a bit weird, did someone tell you that?”

For a short moment, John thinks he sees something like hurt in Sherlock’s pale eyes that are, surprisingly, trained on him, although the detective’s body language signalizes boredom. Then, the look is gone, though and Sherlock rolls his eyes before telling him: “You didn’t have a romantic relationship-“ John is not sure if he just imagined the shortest of breaks before the word ‘romantic’ but he decides to focus on everything Sherlock tells him, intent on not forgetting it again. Or at least, not until he could write it down. “- and from what I gathered, you count Lestrade to your friends. You’re fond of Mrs. Hudson, and Molly from Bart’s.”

“Molly?” John looks up.

“She is not of sexual or romantic interest for you,” Sherlock tells him immediately, and John wonders if he can read his mind, just like he did when they met at Bart’s and he deduced John’s war past within seconds.

“I didn’t – why do you say that? Is she your girlfriend? Wait- she’s the girl who brought you coffee when we met for the first time, right?”

“She is. But I’m not interested in her.” Stating this, Sherlock suddenly jumps up, startling John a bit and grabbing a violin that has been resting on the table for the past week. John knows it’s not his but he could only suppose that it was Sherlock’s. Obviously, the man is trying to signalize the end of this conversation and John is a bit frustrated at his flat mate’s unwillingness to help him remember things. He decides to still push forward, just to see how much he can get out of the man standing at the window, absently lifting the instrument to his neck.

“So, I’m not in a relationship, obviously, but what about you? Is there a girlfriend?”

Sherlock’s head turns quicker than John can blink and the intense stare is back, as if the curly haired man tries to see into his mind, his brain, his soul. There’s a silence you could cut with a knife before the detective picks up the bow and lets it slide over the strings, eliciting a quiet, calm melody John feels he recognizes, but can’t name it. Then, the deep voice catches his attention, sounding softer than he has ever heard it.

“Girlfriend? No, not really my area.”

“Oh, right then.” John pauses and suddenly something in his brain clicks, a familiar scene showing up behind his eyes.

_A restaurant. Sherlock. And he, John. A candle._

_“Do you have a boyfriend? Which is fine, by the way-“_

_“I know it’s fine.”_

_“So you’ve got a boyfriend?”_

_“No.”_

“You’re gay?”

Sherlock looks at him, never stopping his play, but one eyebrow raised. “What makes you think that? But no, I-“ he pauses for a moment as if to think of a way to put it and then he says: “I consider myself married to my work.”

Something about this conversation seems very odd to John, but he doesn’t say it, just accepts the somewhat strange statement of his – admittedly even stranger – flat mate and, when the conversation doesn’t start again, slowly limps to his room – he really needs to find his cane again – where he jots down another note and puts it on his nightstand.

_Friends: Mrs. Hudson, Molly, Greg Lestrade_

The pen hovers over the paper for a moment, but then he shrugs and puts it down, getting ready for bed and falling asleep soon, lulled to sleep by the soft melody from the violin coming up from the living room.

In the middle of the night, he wakes and thinks he sees a shadow standing at his bed, but when he rubs his eyes and looks again, the shadow is gone and nothing seems odd. He goes back to sleep and this time, he dreams of him and Sherlock, standing on… a graveyard, and Sherlock says: _“Listen, what I said before, John, I meant it. I don’t have friends – I’ve only got one.”_

And when the first rays of sunlight light up the room, John wakes and reads the notes on his nightstand, like every morning, to make sure he doesn’t miss anything important. Like him having a wife and three children or whatever he did forget. Oh yes, Sherlock, 221B Baker Street. He’s been drugged. Then he reads the second note.

_Friends: Mrs. Hudson, Molly, Greg Lestrade_

It’s in his own handwriting, so he just files that away as truthful information. But then he realizes something odd. Below this short list, there’s another name. Scribbled down in a curvy handwriting, rather small, but easily readable.

He’s not sure what to think of it. But somehow, calling Sherlock his friend sounds… right.

* * *

“Are you sure I did this?” John casts an uncomfortable look towards the dead young man. “Because it doesn’t really sound like something I’d do. I’m a doctor, I heal people. I don’t look at them when they’re, uh, dead already.”

“I know he’s dead already. I rather hoped you’d go deeper, though,” Sherlock dismisses him.

With a sigh and one last unsure glance towards the consulting detective who taps his foot impatiently, John crouches down – carefully, trying not to put a strain on his leg only to remember that it really hasn’t bothered him for a while now (well, actually for over two and a half years, but he cannot bring himself to count that time he has no recollection of) and starts to examine the deceased.

“He broke his neck. A hit with a blunt object to the back of his head caused the injury where all the blood comes from, but the force of the hit was what cracked his spine,” he announces after a few moments.

“Ah, so you’re still up to your game,” Sherlock mumbles, already kneeling down in a corner of the room, examining what looks suspiciously like dirt.

“What? You knew that?”

“Of course I did. I just needed to find out how useful you are after the incident,” is all he gets as an answer.

“You are a hundred percent sure I did this every day?” John asks Lestrade, who makes a face that looks like a mixture of pity and smugness.

“Yeah. And you absolutely loved it.”

“I’m not sure why, though,” John says, more to himself than to anyone in particular, and he completely misses the sharp look Sherlock sends him. Of course, it only lasts for a split second, but it’s there, plain for everyone to see. Luckily for Sherlock, no one really _observes_. (Most days, that’s the problem with the lot, but today it’s welcome for a change.)

The whole dynamic at the crime scene is off and not only Sherlock recognizes this. Secretly, Lestrade is worried, too. Where John used to marvel at Sherlock working, and happily contributed – or, well, tried to contribute, just like he and the rest of the Yarders tried to – now there’s silence. It’s obvious John doesn’t quite know what to do with himself and Sherlock doesn’t make his deductions out loud.

When the genius decides he’s seen enough, he marches past Lestrade and tells him: “You should find the parrot of the victim. Everything else should be obvious then.” He ignores the confused looks both the DI and John shoot him and simply saunters out of the door and past Sally, who mutters – as usually – a shirty “Freak!”

And this is when the magic happens.

“Oi, what did you just call him?” John asks, eyes trained on the Sergeant, fists clenched at his sides, and face set in a determined, grim way.

Sherlock stops in his tracks. After a moment of silence from everyone, he carefully says: “Leave it, John.”

“No. She shouldn’t call you that,” the doctor argues back.

“Oh, _you_ don’t even _remember_ what he’s like,” Sergeant Donovan tells him off, sounding downright mean.

“For all I know he’s bloody intelligent, I’d even go as far and say brilliant, and better at your work than you are, so no, I really don’t think you should call him ‘freak’,” John concludes icily, and under his look of pure steel, Sally deflates visibly.

“Whatever,” she mutters and leaves, while Sherlock sort of almost gapes (except he doesn’t because that would be out of character for him!) at John. He catches himself quickly, though, and turns on the spot, starting to walk again. However, this time he picks a slower pace and calls out an almost excited “Do keep up, John!”, allowing the doctor to catch with him, which he does immediately, without even thinking about it. Something has clicked between them, and the ensuing silence is not uncomfortable anymore.

Lestrade watches them go, for the first time in weeks hopeful that maybe John is going to be alright again. Because no matter how much Sherlock pretends not to care, he suffers under not having the John he knows around, and Lestrade, too, misses his best mate, misses the evenings at the pub, the jokes between them. Although John is there, he’s also missing.

But maybe it’s going to be alright.

oOo

John sits on the sofa this evening, sated, relaxed and comfortable in the flat that has been his home for a long time and at the same time only for two weeks. Sherlock is standing in front of the window, playing his violin, and John is content with just watching him and listening.

He feels different around his flat-mate, like… he connected with him in some sort of way. He’s still not sure about the whole crime scenes thing, and can’t quite wrap his mind around how Sherlock thinks and sees and observes and deduces, but after they’d left the Yarders, Sherlock had taken him to a small Italian restaurant (whose owner was disturbed to hear about John’s condition – apparently another friend he has forgotten – and seemed determined to restore John’s brain function with a massive amount of delicious food. It hasn’t quite helped, but he’s never been so full in his life and that feels amazing at the moment) where they had eaten and talked about the case. Talking to Sherlock about crimes was actually pretty amazing – he got really excited about them, his eyes glistened, he gestured and was giddy, like a kid on Christmas.

From an completely neutral point of view, Sherlock is an attractive man, the sort of man who could easily become a model or film star, just by his looks, but there, in the dimly lit restaurant (and with a candle between them John wasn’t really sure about), he’s looked _beautiful_ for the first time. Which isn’t exactly a neutral thought, but whatever.

Now, he’s playing the violin, wearing the by-now-familiar blue dressing gown, and John is in thoughts. He feels a headache coming, and recognizes it as a sign of him remembering. It always starts like this. Like when he remembered that he was to never open the drawer in the fridge because it contained time-and-temperature sensitive experiments, without Sherlock having to tell him.

That was the first sign of him actually having lived with Sherlock Holmes for a long period of time. The fact that he remembered such a small, trivial thing one could only learn by living with someone else for some time.

Or when he remembered that he sometimes helped Mrs. Hudson with mending stuff on Saturday mornings. He just remembered when he woke up one Saturday.

But not only he remembers small things, he also gets better at keeping stuff in his mind again. Now, at the end of his second week out of hospital, he doesn’t need to read the reminder note on his nightstand to know what has happened. The doctors call that progress. John supposes it is.

With the headache, and the quiet background noise of the violin, memories flood John’s brain.

 

 _The small Italian restaurant. Sherlock looking out of the window, waiting for something._  
  
The suddenly a chase, through nightly London streets.  
  
Another time at the restaurant, Sherlock sulking in the chair across him.  
  
“You could’ve ordered your own food,” John chastises him.  
  
“Boring,” Sherlock replies. There are small red marks on the back of his hand, where John has poked him with his fork when the detective tried to steal food from John’s plate.  
  
Another stake-out (at Angelo’s. Angelo’s is the name of the restaurant). Sherlock pretending to be drunk. Pretending to start a fight. John following him in a safe distance.  
  
A photo being taken – Angelo, John and Sherlock, because the restaurant owner wants it framed on his wall, because he loves Sherlock like he loves a son. (And because it’s good for his business.)

 

“We – we go and have dinner at Angelo’s often, right?” John asks, and Sherlock finishes the piece he’s been playing, before lowering his bow. He keeps the violin at his neck, though.

“I suppose you can say ‘often’, yes. Usually after cases. I don’t-“

“You don’t eat during cases.” John is surprised at his own words.

“You remembered.”

“A few things, yes. Just… bits.”

Sherlock watches him intently for a moment, as if he’s waiting for him to continue, to add something. When he doesn’t, the detective’s eyes flicker away and he raises his bow again, jaw a bit tighter than before. John feels like he just failed some sort of important test, but he doesn’t want the friendliness and ease between the two of them slip away so easily, and so he quickly asks: “What is it you were playing before? I really liked that.”

For a moment, Sherlock seems to consider if he should answer. Then he descends to do so. “Tchaikovsky.”

John smiles. “Can you play something like that again? Please?”

And Sherlock doesn’t answer, but soon the sounds of Swan Lake fill 221B, and John sighs in content, leaning back on the sofa and closing his eyes.

oOo

Halfway through Swan Lake, John is fast asleep, and only now Sherlock allows himself to stare again.

John remembers things.

The problem is, it’s completely useless things. Nothing of importance. Nothing about-

Sherlock’s phones bings, but he ignores it in favour of Tchaikovsky (bloody ridiculous, playing Tchaikovsky, when there’s so much more to play, but John has always loved the basic, common stuff). He’s completely losing himself in the music now, eyes trained on John’s relaxed, sleeping features that are only illuminated by the flames in the fireplace. The flat is dark mostly, but Sherlock doesn’t need to see. He, too, remembers.

 

_He has never thought he could feel like this. Calm, eerily calm, and peaceful. Content, just lying in bed. The warm body next to him moves. A hand starts to roam over his belly under the sheets._

_He squirms when the hand reaches a ticklish part._

_“Sorry, love.”_

_The term of endearment slips out casually, and Sherlock finds he doesn’t mind being called that. It’s so incredibly domestic, so normal – but it’s, surprisingly, not dull. How could it be, with h-_

_“You’re thinking again, aren’t you?” Amusement. Adoration. Love. All this packed into one voice. Sherlock is amazed._

_“I’m always thinking.”_

_“I know, and I love you for it. Among other things.”_

_Sherlock cocks an eyebrow, intrigued. Playful. (What a strange mood to be in!) “Is that so?”_

_“Yes… Let me show you what else I love-“_

_Kisses move over his body then, and soon he finds himself busy with reciprocating these kisses, with his hands full of warm, golden body, and with his mind occupied with completely messy thoughts._

_A mouth presses kisses onto his knuckles, suddenly, and the action is so intimate, and loving, that Sherlock looks up, desire-clouded eyes slowly focusing on the person administering these affections. He earns a chuckle for his bedazzled look._

_“I love your fingers. Always have. I love them when you do your experiments, or when you punch someone, or when you prod at something worth investigating. And when you play your violin… like when you played the piece I like so much, earlier.”_

_Sherlock tries to remember. “Tchaikovsky.”_

_“Yes, that one.” And with that, the kisses resume, and soon turn into something more._

 

Swan Lake is over, and the fire has burnt down. Sherlock fights with himself for a few minutes, before he throws a blanket over John and heads towards (their) his bedroom. It’s cold in there. But then again that’s no surprise. It has been for over two weeks.

oOo

A month later, Sherlock can’t escape Mycroft anymore. The fat bastard sits in John’s chair, looking for all the world like he bloody owns the place, and regards Sherlock a thoughtful (one might even go as far and call it pitiful) look when the detective enters.

“Ah, brother. Good to see you.”

“Absolutely not,” is Sherlock’s immediate reply. Of course Mycroft has anticipated that, and doesn’t move a muscle in his face. “Now, leave – you know where the door is, after all I presume you entered through it. It’s not like you fit through our bathroom window.”

Sherlock watches in glee how Mycroft’s left corner of the mouth twitches once. _Hit him where it hurts._

“Your humour is, as always, as eloquent as amusing. However, you might want to consider staying serious, seeing as I’m here to talk to you about your… colleague. How _is_ Doctor Watson?”

Sherlock flops down on the sofa, making a point of lounging as obvious as possible, as opposed to Mycroft’s stiff, posh position in the armchair. “Seeing as you have access to all the files, telling you would be a waste of time.”

“As usual, you mistake me for your enemy, brother dear. I really do want to help you.”

“Then if you would help yourself to the door, _please_?”

“Why don’t you tell him?” Mycroft says this incredibly calm, ignoring his younger brother’s childish game. He encounters silence. “The Doctors think it’s best for John-“

“Don’t call him that. You have no right.”

“-it’s best for Doctor Watson to live in an environment he is used to. To trigger memories. But that’s not working as of yet, is it?”

“It’s brain damage, of course he isn’t going to magically heal just because he sees his usual tea mug or tapestry again,” Sherlock dismisses him, taking great caution to sound descending.

“Nothing so trivial, no. But if he encountered or relived something of great importance to him, it might help.”

Sherlock is tired of his brother’s game now, and he has no intention to raise to the bait, so he just sits and glares. Mycroft waits it out patiently, and patience has never been a virtue of Sherlock, so finally, he says: “I’m not throwing myself off another rooftop again.”

“You know what I’m trying to say. If you were to tell him-“

“I won’t.”

Mycroft looks puzzled. Well, not to the normal observer. To them, he looks icy as always. But Sherlock can read it in his body language.

“I really do think it would do both of you good.”

“No it wouldn’t. Go stick your nose in someone else’s business!”

“What do you think will happen if he finds out about it, or even remembers it again?” Mycroft looks calculating now. He, too, knows to hit where it hurts, although that is, for once, not his intention.

“No one knew.” Sherlock doesn’t bother to exclude Mycroft from ‘no-one’ because obviously, his brother doesn’t count. “He won’t hear it. And I. Won’t. Tell. Him.”

And that’s really all that needs saying. Mycroft knows when he’s lost and leaves (although Sherlock can’t quite find the satisfaction he hoped for in that).

Mycroft’s visit was as unnerving as unnecessary. Nothing is going to change.

He won’t talk to John. He won’t tell him. He can’t tell him.

Because, quite obviously, it wasn’t real.

If the delusions of those who believe in romance and undying love were real, _nothing_ would have changed. Love overcomes the obstacle and everything is perfect. But _everything_ has changed. And John doesn’t feel _that way_ anymore.

It was all just a lie. (He’s not hurt by that, he tells himself. Of course he’s not. That would be stupid. Something only dull people do. He’s Sherlock Holmes, for God’s sake.)

Sherlock moves on. (Tries to. Wants to. Needs to.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS NOT A NEW CHAPTER. THE NEXT ONE IS.  
> (I simply decided to split the first part in two chapters because of the length. If you know the first part already, you can skip this chapter and go straight to the next one.)

“I don’t know why I have to sit through this again,” Sherlock complains loudly, while John catches up on the past years of Doctor Who. (He’s still trying to get over the shock of having a twelfth doctor!)

“Well, I don’t remember having seen any of it, and you can do something else if you want to. No one is forcing you to sit here,” John advises, caught up in the program. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind. You’re hogging the blankets and most of the space,” he adds in an afterthought, but it’s not scolding rather than good-naturedly.

It’s true. Sherlock is sprawled out over the sofa on which John had originally been sitting alone, and has proceeded to shove icy toes under John’s thighs, as well as snatching John’s tea and blanket. John, however, can’t bring himself to find this ridiculous (just maybe a tiny bit) because no matter what he can or cannot remember, this feels… right. Like something Sherlock would do and he, John, would tolerate.

And he honestly doesn’t mind Sherlock when they’re like this, calm, in the evening, relaxing, after having chased criminals all over London. It’s been two months now since he woke up, and he still can’t remember much.

Some of the others whom he got to know again over the past weeks – Lestrade, Molly Hooper from the Morgue at St. Bart’s and Mrs. Hudson – try their best to trigger his memory by telling him stories, showing him old case files of cases he has, apparently, solved with Sherlock, and things like that.

Then there’s Sherlock, who is mad as a hatter, unfriendly and completely unhelpful when John asks things, but also utterly amazing at times. Deducing. Doing things John recognizes as favours to him, although Sherlock can’t be arsed to admit it.

There’s moments, during or after chases, when they collapse in laughter, when John’s head is swimming with danger and endorphins, when his lungs are still burning from the cold and when Sherlock’s coat is still radiating the chilly autumn air.

 

_They’re laughing, leaning against the wall, John clutching his stomach, Sherlock throwing his head back, his curls shaking, bouncing with the deep laughter that’s coming from the detective’s throat._

_“I can’t believe he tried to hit you with the lid of a bin!”_

_“Like bloody Captain America!”_

_“You’re an enigma, John Watson.”_

 

“At least try and pay attention to this atrocious show,” Sherlock grumbles from between the folds of the blanket, and John zooms back in. “I honestly don’t understand why they had to write the shouty companion off the show. She wouldn’t have been half as annoying as this guy. He’s managed to blow up the TARDIS again – how many companions did that?!”

“Interesting how much you know about this ‘atrocious show’,” John quips, secretly thinking that of course Sherlock would like Donna best, just because she wasn’t fawning over her Doctor all the time (a fact which Sherlock hated about the other companions).

“I blame you.”

“Of course you do.”

They both settle back and keep watching.

John’s only wrong about one part. Sherlock doesn’t like Donna because she was never romantically interested in the Doctor. He likes her because she reminds him of John.

oOo

Sherlock doesn’t move a muscle in his face when the thief hits him again, ripping the skin on his cheek open. The situation is, granted, a bit unfortunate, with him being tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse and currently beaten to death, but it could be worse.

Probably. Most likely. Somehow.

The thief he had been following here was apparently not just a thief, but also one of Sanchez’ old men. Still angry about Sanchez’ death. For which he, rightfully, blamed Sherlock. Hence, the beating.

“Smile for the camera, Mr. Holmes,” the man grunts out, pointing to the camera on the tripod. “Your dead body will be the last thing the Internet is going to see of you.”

He moves over then, and Sherlock realizes he’s about to have his neck broken. There’s absolutely nothing he can do.

And then the thief’s face explodes in blood and pieces of bone, which spray Sherlock’s face.

He can’t hold back the breathy “John”, but thankfully his savior is not hearing it, with him running towards the detective and shouting his name. Shortly before he reaches Sherlock, however, he misses a step, face suddenly far away.

Sherlock watches in interest, blinking through the blood of a stranger running down his face. He doesn’t care, now that he’s dead. After a few seconds, John catches himself again and closes the distance between them.

He automatically checks for Sherlock’s pulse and pupils before starting to untie him.

“Well, I’m glad no one saw that,” the detective says lightly, without thinking about it – that is, until John looks up abruptly and narrows his eyes in confusion. “You, untying me from a chair, looking all over the place. People might talk.” After a pause, he adds: “People do little else, though.” Then he smiles, slowly, and John… John joins him.

Sherlock hopes. For a moment, it looked like John remembered the familiar words Sherlock uttered without any intention of actually repeating what John once said to him, in a darkened swimming pool. But then the confusion leaves John’s eye and he simply smiles the brilliant smile before gently wiping away some blood with the dead thief’s jacket.

“Yes. Well, we probably shouldn’t tell people about my involvement,” John suggests, not the slightest bit bothered by the man-with-the-exploded-head on the ground.

“You’re on camera,” Sherlock points out.

John frowns, then kicks the tripod and stomps on the camera, before grinning at his newly-freed partner. “Looks like you fell on it when you tried to free yourself.”

“What a shame.”

“Isn’t it just? Now, let’s get out of here.” John holds out his hand for a moment, and then, as if only just realizing what he’s doing, takes it back, redness creeping up his cheeks. “Uh, I mean, before Lestrade arrives and questions me. I’m not sure if I can play it down again.”

Sherlock starts walking, but when they’ve put a safe distance between themselves and the warehouse, he casually asks: “Again?”

“Well, I did shoot a cabbie for you, didn’t I?” John says this confident, a satisfied look on his face, and Sherlock tries to ignore the way his heartbeat fastens at the realization that this is what John seemed to have remembered upon running towards him.

“He was an awful cabbie.”

John grins. “True.” Then he cocks his head. “Can you tell me about the case?”

Sherlock considers this. “No. I would go into the scientific details about which you, how I know, don’t care too much. I suggest you read it up on your blog, seeing as you put all the things you considered important there.” It’s obvious from his tone that the things John considered important are not what Sherlock would have considered important at all.

However, John frowns at something else. “I’m not supposed to read it. So as not to jinx my memory.”

“It’s not so different to others telling you about your old life, and seeing as you remembered details by yourself, you might as well go ahead.”

John can only nod, although he still doesn’t quite understand why Sherlock can’t tell him. He has the distinct feeling that it’s not because of the scientific stuff. It’s like… Sherlock doesn’t want to.

Maybe he really should just read it in his own words. After all, who knows John Watson better than John Watson?

(The answer is, of course, Sherlock Holmes, but John doesn’t know this.)

oOo

_“It was the most ridiculous night of my life - I mean, an actual chase through London. People don't do that, not really. But we did.  
And, of course, by doing this, Sherlock proved my limp was psychosomatic. Did I mention he's clever?”_

Had he really written that? Well of course he had, but…

_“Sherlock was going to take one of the pills.“_

Hell, Sherlock had obviously not done that, seeing as he was still here, and John remembers how it had ended, but reading this causes a heavy lump in his stomach to weigh him down on the sofa. He notices his hand is trembling.

_“Which is when someone shot the taxi driver.“_

Ah, there it is. There _he_ is. John quickly reads on. Until he stumbles over a name.

_“Moriarty.”_

For some reason, the name sends shivers down his spine. He tries to make a mental note to ask Sherlock about it (or maybe Lestrade, since he doesn’t really expect Sherlock to answer).

_“And since that night? It hasn't stopped. Oh, there's so much more I've got to tell you.“_

This is where younger-John has stopped the entry. And now-John, despite missing a great part of his memories, can feel the rush of excitement even now. He has had his suspicions about moving in with Sherlock first, true, but now, two months into his new life, he knows that he doesn’t want to do anything else.

oOo

Sherlock, once again, finds John asleep on the couch, laptop still on his knees – frankly it’s ridiculous how incompetent the doctor seems to be in deciding when it’s time for him to go to bed. He certainly didn’t fall asleep on the sofa so often when he was still _himself_.

Then again, he did shoot another man for Sherlock today – again – and Sherlock supposes that might fall into the ‘emotional exhausted’ category. He sighs, then lightly nudges John’s shoulder.

The shorter man stirs a bit, doesn’t open his eyes, though, but mumbles: “What is it, love?”

Sherlock freezes on the spot. “What?”

But John is already completely asleep. Sherlock, because his legs don’t support him anymore, slumps down in the armchair across John.

For a moment, one tiny moment, there was- Of course, his brain somehow bypassed the drug damage. It was John’s subconscious talking.

The flat is suddenly too small, everything else too big. John’s presence is overly large, it’s like he’s everywhere, like Sherlock can’t even breathe in without taking John in. His hands tremble (like John’s used to –use to-, when he was –is- unbalanced) and for the first time in years, Sherlock’s eyes settle on the mantelpiece of the fireplace.

No one has ever found the hidden compartment there, edged into the wood, completely camouflaged. He is fairly certain that if he used, John wouldn’t notice. At least, not straight away.

When – if? – he did, he would be furious. He would yell at Sherlock. And for one delicious moment, everything would be exactly as it would be if Sherlock had used back when John was John. The exact same reaction.

(Although, probably not, because John-John would probably try and talk Sherlock through it, would hold him, cradle him until it got better, whereas new John would most likely just leave because he wouldn’t want to live with a junkie.)

But new-John is already hooked. Hooked on the adventure, the thrill. So maybe he won’t leave. Maybe he will stay. There really is only one way to find out.

It would not be hurtful. In fact, it would make everything less hurtful.   
  
Sherlock can’t forget, can’t delete, has to live facing is loss every day. He can’t delete him. Or the pain, or the feeling of having been betrayed, having been lied to. He has every right to dull the pain.

He didn’t want to be normal. He didn’t want to feel all this _shit_. Didn’t need it. He was perfectly fine without feelings. Now he’s a wreck.

He deserves liquid freedom, injected to the crook of his arm. He deserves it.

Gets up.

Moves past John, towards the fireplace.

And freezes when he brushes John’s leg and the fast asleep doctor utters a low, barely audible “Sherlock.”

Sits down again.

Watches John.

Maybe he will wait for another night. Maybe he can live with the ache in his chest a night longer. Maybe he can just ignore it. Get over it. Maybe he can.

(Maybe he can’t.)

oOo

John reaches 221B, packed with bags full of groceries – because, as usual, Sherlock can’t be bothered to do the shopping – and he’s in a pretty foul mood, considering it’s pouring down on him and he wouldn’t even have a free hand to hold an umbrella if he had one with him. Which he hasn’t.

He looks up just in time not to run a) into the front door, and b) into the figure standing in front of it, finger hovering over the door bell. The person twitches in surprise when John stops in his tracks with a “woah!”

“I almost had a heart attack,” the person says, turning around – and turns out to be a woman. She’s about John’s height (although she’s wearing heels, so she might be a bit shorter actually), has blonde hair and a pretty face, although she’s too thin, almost gaunt, with deep shadows under her eyes. Otherwise, she might be considered extremely pretty, if it wasn’t for the obvious countless sleepless nights.

“Jesus, I’m sorry-“ John apologizes, rain still pouring down on him.

“Oh, no, it’s fine, I was just – oh, I’m so sorry, you’re getting completely soaked. You want to see Mr. Holmes, too? Come and get under the umbrella, I was just about to ring the bell,” she offers, holding up the large black umbrella a bit higher.

Without thinking much, John steps under it (now a bit too close to the friendly young woman, but at least out of the rain) before he smirks and puts down two bags. “Actually, I live here. John Watson,” he offers. “And – I’ve got a key. Sherlock’s not at home at the moment, but you can come in and wait for him there instead of standing in the rain all day.”

“So you’re my knight in soaked armour?” The blonde jokes, and when she smiles, her face looses a lot of the gauntness. “I’m Mary Morstan. Nice to meet you.”

oOo

Sherlock comes home and sees John Watson in love. It’s beautiful, the way his eyes shine with every look, the way he carries himself – taller, more self-aware than usual – and the way there are little crinkle around his eyes when he smiles so fondly at the subject of his adoration.

All the beauty of John is dimmed by the presence of said subject of adoration, though.

She is pretty enough, Sherlock supposes. Blonde, a bit shorter than John. He likes that. Likes being able to protect someone smaller. It’s easy to imagine how he pulls her into a hug, how he holds her close, rests his chin on top of her head. Holds her like he never wants to let go.

They can have beautiful children together, once she loses the look of being haunted by nightly terrors. Blue-eyed, blonde-haired children. John always wanted those.

 

_“You want some. Children.”_

_“I used to, yes.”_

_“Why not anymore?”_

_“Because… they won’t fit in now, would they? Between the crimes and the blogging and the experiments. In our life – they wouldn’t fit into our life.”_

_Our life, he said. It had sounded so final. So beautiful._

 

“Sherlock!” John’s eyes turn away from the woman, turn to Sherlock and a shadow of the warmth in them graces him. He remains unmoved on the outside. (Basks in it, though.)

“John,” he acknowledges him and focuses completely on her.

She looks at him from her blue eyes and there’s steel in them under all her vulnerability. “Mr. Holmes, I’m Mary Morstan. I need your help.”

“People usually do,” he replies and is impressed by her demand. Usually, people ask him for help. She states it as if she’s sure she’s going to get it. As if she knows she’s interesting. (She can’t possibly know that, can she?)

He sits down, more out of habit than because he wants to, but John brings him a mug of tea and that alone is worth staying seated for forever. John sits down next to Mary, much closer than necessary (and not in his chair, why isn’t he sitting in his chair; this is all wrong) and Sherlock feels the need to be impressive. It takes a couple of seconds.

“You’re a widow and your late husband only died recently, most likely within the last two months. You still have the line from your ring on your finger but you wear it on a necklace around your neck because you can’t stand looking at it with every move and yet you don’t want to miss its weight. You loved your husband and you don’t believe he died of a natural cause.” She looks impressed, and so does John. Sherlock can’t stop himself. “You weren’t sure about coming here, but something changed your mind today. A letter you received.”

Mary’s eyes flicker to her coat. Out of the coat pocket, a simple white envelope is poking out, just enough to see the slightly watery stamp. The London Clinic Cancer Centre.

It’s just down the road.

“How long?”

She doesn’t look scared, or sad, or threatened by Sherlock’s knowledge. He thinks he likes her although he doesn’t want to. “With treatment, most children with brain cancer make it for about five years. Adults… less, mostly. The doctors think a year.”

In another form of reality, Sherlock hears John gasp and then murmur to Mary. He reaches out for her hand and she takes it hesitantly but smiles a bit when he gives it a squeeze. Sherlock, in his own reality, thinks he doesn’t want this case. He doesn’t want to like Mary Morstan, whose dying wish is to give her late husband the peace he deserves. John wants him to take that case, he knows it.

He says: “I’ll take the case.”

Because John Watson has fallen in love with Mary Morstan.

And how could Sherlock say no to a John Watson in love?

He can’t. (He never could.)

oOo

John kisses Mary a week later, when Sherlock solves the case and proves that, indeed, Mary’s late husband has been murdered. He makes sure Lestrade arrests the right men.

John doesn’t go out with him to Angelo’s that night, though. He goes to Mary and kisses her when she locks her wedding ring into a small chest and cries a single tear.

They sleep with each other that night and long after Mary has gone to sleep, her small, tight body pressed against John’s, John realizes this is the first time he’s been away from Baker Street for the night since he moved in there. (Or maybe it isn’t and he just doesn’t remember.) He wonders what Sherlock is doing and then quickly stops following that track of thoughts because that is not what blokes think when they have their arms around a gorgeous woman.

He falls asleep and dreams.

 

_“I’m dead, you know?” Long fingers ghost over his naked back, trace the lumpy skin where the bullet left his shoulder. He recognizes a rhythm the fingers drum out – the same rhythm he has heard being played on the violin when he climbed the stairs to 221B after a day at the clinic. The violin he’d thought he’d never hear again._

_The shopping is probably still lying on the steps where he left it, dropped upon hearing the beautiful song. Sure he was hallucinating, because Sherlock died six months ago and cannot possibly be playing the violin again._

_“I don’t care if you’re dead. I’m kissing you anyway, so shut up.” And John does exactly that. Kisses plump lips with that ridiculous Cupid ’s bow until he forgets the pain of the past half year, forgets being lonely and heartbroken._

John wakes in the morning and sees Mary sitting on the edge of the bed, a dressing gown wrapped around her small frame. She looks sick, and exhausted, and beautiful in the light of the morning sun shining into the small bedroom.

“I still love him,” she says. She is talking about her late husband, absently fondling her neck where the ring has been for the past months.

“I know. I’m not here to replace him.” He means it. He thinks he loves her, and he’s willing to love her unconditionally. It’s not about the bags she carries around with herself. He’s got enough of his own. He doesn’t care about it.

“I’m dead, you know?” she asks, giving him a sad smile over the shoulder.

And he kisses her and whispers: “I don’t care if you’re dead. I’m kissing you anyway, so shut up.”

oOo

Sherlock has never liked when John was yelling before, but right now he can’t imagine a thing more beautiful. A great, terrifying beauty it is, but a beauty none the less. The passion in John’s eyes make them go dark and Sherlock can see his own reflection in them, his pale face, his own silver eyes. He sees himself in John, is part of John.

This might very likely be the last time he is part of John, though. Because John wants to move out wants to leave him for Mary Morstan. Dying, beautiful, tragic Mary Morstan.

Sherlock suggested John stayed here. He can love her from here, from Baker Street. Love is not influenced by distance.

_In icy Russia, he loves him._

_In warm, humid India, he loves him._

_In scorching hot Mali, he loves him._

_In windy Chicago, he loves him._

_Wherever he hunts down Moriarty’s web, he loves John Watson._

 

“If this is about the rent-“

“It’s not.” John, it has never been about the rent. Look at my coat. It costs more than the monthly rent.

“Well then I don’t understand your problem!”

Sherlock wants to be honest with him, wants to shake him, yell at him. He wants to do everything normal, boring people do if it only helps John _see_. See what the problem is, see what they have, see what they _had_.

But it wasn’t true. All of what they had, it wasn’t true.

(He doesn’t need it anyway. This is the conclusion he came to and he is going to stick with it. However, John is a vital part of the work. It is simply unacceptable for him to leave Baker Street, because as little as his effort in the cases helps to actually solve them, it is his whole being, the essence of John Watson that makes Sherlock the man he is.)

What will become of Baker Street, and Sherlock Holmes, if John Watson leaves? Sherlock said once that Baker Street would fall if Mrs. Hudson left, but what he conveniently neglected to mention was that Sherlock Holmes would fall if John Watson left. Even before- well, everything.

If John leaves now, it is only a matter of days before the Montague Street days repeat themselves.

Sherlock can see Mycroft’s face, a pancake face, pitying, condescending, floating in front of his inner eye. He will say “Oh, _Sherlock_ …” in that tone he has. Mrs. Hudson will try and fix the world with jammie dodgers and a cuppa, and she won’t understand that Sherlock Holmes’ world is not fixed by this. His world needs another fix and if it can’t get it, there is still _the old fix_. Safely stored away in the hidden compartment of the mantelpiece. Of course Lestrade will have something to say, too. Or maybe words will fail him when he finds him, and he will shake his head like he sometimes does when Sherlock has once again surprised him with is inhumanity.

“My problem is that you’re running away with a woman who will most likely die within the next year and you’re giving up everything we’ve worked for for the past three years,” Sherlock says, in the clear knowledge that this barely scrapes what he means to say.

John blinks, twice, and goes calm. Sherlock recognizes this look, and he knows (fears) he has overstepped a certain boundary. Back in the good days, John would have told him which part of his speech was not-good. He would do it angrily, but knowing that Sherlock was a good man at heart (at least that was what he, and Greg, and Mrs. Hudson, used to say). New John doesn’t know this, because he barely knows Sherlock. “My God, you’re… horrible!”

At least that’s a new one.

When Sherlock remains silent, understanding dawns on John’s face. “You don’t even realize, do you? I-“ he stops himself, puts his hands on his hips, does a half-turn, breathes. Regaining his patience.

“It doesn’t matter, all of it – Mary being sick, me not knowing her for long,” he tries again, and Sherlock doesn’t want to listen but he could never not listen to John (except when it was boring things like ‘buy milk’ and ‘don’t reheat eyeballs and Chow Mein on the same plate’.) ”I love her. You know that I love her! God-“ John rakes fingers through his short hair and leaves it sticking up all over the place. “Why can’t you understand that? Have you never been in love?!”

Sherlock blinks. The burn from deep within his guts races through his body like Greek fire. It can’t be extinguished, can’t be tamed, and creeps along his veins until he feels like breaking apart. The worst burn is the burn behind his eyes but John can’t see, so he turns with his usual air of disinterest. He thinks he gives of an air of coldness although it seems impossible to him right now when he’s burning up on the inside.

“Love is a chemical reaction in the brain. It’s paralyzing, with vicious potential. It inflicts self-harm and masks it as joy.”

As John is experiencing with Mary right now because he will be in so much pain when she dies eventually.

As Sherlock is experiencing right now.

There’s a look of wonder in John’s eye, the same look Sherlock has seen so many times during their time together. As opposed to all the other times, though, it is now sad. For a while, the whole flat remains silent.

Rustling of John’s jacket ends it. “You know, I wish you were in love, so you would see that it’s none of those things…” He looks indecisive (Sherlock sees it in the reflection of the window because he can’t turn right now). Finally, he adds: “I’ll be picking up my things over the next couple of days.” And then he leaves, carefully closing the door to 221B behind him.

oOo

Love, much like heroin, makes it impossible to resume a life before, Sherlock philosophises. Even if you give up the habit, your body remembers, craves, aches for what it’s being denied. And, much like heroin, you don’t miss love until you tasted it and can’t ever have it again.

A feeling. How can one become addicted to a feeling?

And how can one revisit it safely?

The answer is simple. One can’t. One can replace it with a substitute, though.

Cigarettes for heroin. Pain for love. It only seems fair.

So instead of numbing himself, Sherlock drowns in the one feeling he has access to right now. (Drugs are bad, feelings are bad. Primal things, and yet Sherlock will never lock those things up ever again. He doesn’t care if it’s pedestrian, below his dignity and everything Mycroft scoffs about.)

He lays on his (their) bed and feels the pain.

 

_They have had an argument, and Sherlock finds him sitting on their bed later, silently staring at an invisible mark on the wall. He approaches carefully, unsure of what to do. It’s new, and throwing him off-balance. But he feels like he has to try, at least. “Why do you bother with me?”_

_Blue eyes find him, then, leaving the wall and settling on him. “Because I love you, you idiot. That’s what you do when you’re in love. Have you never been in love before?”_

_What a stupid question. “No, of course not. With whom should I have been in love? No one is you.”_

 

oOo

The invitation comes in the mail.

John Hamish Watson & Mary Elizabeth Morstan

would like you to join them in celebrating

their marriage.

It’s in a week’s time from now, a small circle. Just at the registry office. Soon, as soon as possible, because Mary is fading by the day.

Sherlock tosses it away, with no intention of going, and finds another, handwritten note in the envelope.

It would mean a lot to me if you came. Please.

I want you to be my best man.

\- John.

So he buys John a nice suit (“There is nothing wrong with my suit, you posh git!” – oh, John. The things that are wrong with this suit…) and gives it to him as a wedding present. He gets a similar looking suit, so they don’t look ridiculous. He gets Mary a hair pin with a blue gemstone that sits proudly in her hair on her wedding day, glistening in the daylight.

People say it’s the colour of John’s eyes, and that he must have taken a lot of time to find it. John tells them Sherlock picked it and they turn to him and give him a wondrous smile, like he surprised them all.

There are very few people there – a couple of old friends from med school days, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Molly. Two friends of Mary’s. And Mycroft, looming by the back of the door, an ever present figure in the back of Sherlock’s head.

No one objects to the marriage when the official asks.

And Sherlock obviously does not mouth ‘I do’ or something equally ridiculous when John recites his vows and the official asks Mary if she wants to marry him.

Instead, he claps like the others do, and poses for a photo when he is asked to.

However, the only picture of him smiling is one taken by the photographer in a calm moment when people swarm Mary to congratulate her on her dress and her hair and her new husband and John looks on with a small smile, watched by Sherlock. Smiling Sherlock.

The speech he’s written (and knows by heart, because all of it comes from his heart or what’s left of it) remains in the inner pocket of his suit jacket and is tossed into a corner of the room when he arrives back at Baker Street only hours after the reception, just when the dancing has started.

 

_“You can’t dip me!” he laughs out, but makes no move to straighten himself again or struggle in the firm hold._

_“It’s part of the music. Feel it. And don’t trample around.”_

_“Git,” is being mumbled, but without passion, and the waltz sounding through the dimly lit flat washes over them again._

_Neither of them is used to this, but it had seemed like a ridiculous and amazing idea when they had started and now neither of them wants to let go._

_“I did this before, you know?” Warm words. Softly washing over them while they move to the music. “In the army. There was this bloke, Freddy, who planned on getting married when he got back home. He needed us to practice dancing.” It’s not all bad memories of Afghanistan days, then._

_He acknowledges it silently, before teasing: “You dance better if you don’t concentrate.”_

_A slow grin spread on the face of the man in his arms. “Then you should distract me some more.”_

_They sleep on the floor of the sitting room that night, in front of the fire. Naked, wrapped up in each other._

 

Sherlock sits in his chair in front of the fire until he falls asleep, wrapped in his dressing gown, to the sound of a London night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEW CHAPTER. YOU FOUND IT. YOU GO, PEOPLE.

Days turn into weeks, seasons fade into each other twice. Married life is becoming John well and although he doesn’t _remember_ much anymore (just bits and pieces, unimportant all of them!) he isn’t bothered by it, because the creeping, lurking sickness in Mary’s head takes memories from her, too, and they make a perfect couple.

There are invitations, every other week, to come over for dinner, or out to the pub, all of which Sherlock declines. He is scooped up in the flat – not relapsing, not yet, maybe soon, but not yet – and the world slowly forgets about the consulting detective. Goes quiet. Just as it gets quiet around Mary when she is taken to the hospital in an ambulance for the first time.

She recovers quickly and is out within a couple of days. But these incidents add up, they happen more frequently and they get more severe each time until she barely sees the small flat she and John call home anymore.

Sherlock doesn’t go and visit her (or John) and he makes a deal with Mycroft – no drugs in exchange for information. When he reads Mary’s medical file one evening, in almost complete darkness except for a fire that is a poor excuse for human warmth in the flat, he knows immediately that Mary won’t make it to the end of the month.

“Are you happy?”

Oh, for the love of everything that is holy- Mycroft has apparently _not_ left. (Still, the only warmth is coming from the fire. Holmeses are creatures of ice. Mycroft even more so than Sherlock.)

“I’ve been told on multiple occasions that expressing happiness about death is ‘a bit not-good’.”

“I did not know you started being concerned with etiquette.”

“While you are clearly concerned with the ingestion of chocolate cake again,” Sherlock remarks and wishes Mycroft died a horrible death, preferably right now. Then, he would express all the due happiness without a second thought.

“Mary Morstan is dying.”

“She has been dying since the moment John fell in love with her.” Because John is attracted to broken people.

The older Holmes quirks an eyebrow – one day it’s going to be stuck that way, Sherlock hopes that it’s soon and that Mummy will be around to see it. “As have you.” They both know that Sherlock’s process of dying won’t end with death (not with Mary’s, at least). Mycroft’s pitying look turns Sherlock’s stomach.

oOo

The funeral is short and very sad. Then again, most funerals are. The priest would probably love to go on and on about how strong Mary was to endure the ordeals God has put her through, and how especially sad it is that she had to go without having children or a chance to grow old. However, a pointed look from Mycroft – always in the background, always meddling, always sticking his nose in funerals that… that are not his own! – helps keeping the sermon to an endurable length.

John is thankful for the short sermon and that’s the most important part.

There is no casket to cry over. Mary’s body has been cremated and all that remains of her wiry body is an urn full of ash. Sherlock briefly wonders how her body burnt. Well, probably. Easy. Catching fire within seconds, flames licking at the door of the oven. All the chemicals they put into her during her chemo must’ve left her perfectly prepared, going up like tinder. He doesn’t share these thoughts.

John’s body is taunt, ready to snap any moment. When Sherlock lightly touches his shoulder, he half-expects the shorter man to fall apart. Millions of particles of John-ness, trickling through his fingers like sand, sinking into his skin with the heavy sadness tangible in every grain. It would weigh him down, suffocate him.

However, John does nothing of the sort. He simply stares on, with a hollow look, until the sermon’s over, the people have paid their respects and hesitatingly leave them alone, until all that remains is John and Sherlock and Mary’s ash.

“Now-“ John’s voice is hoarse and he has to clear his throat before resuming his speech. “Now I’ve buried the two people I loved most on this planet.”

Sherlock’s brain is short-circuiting then and he fights the impulse to yank John around because he _remembers_? He remembers that? How can he- does he remember everything now? He feels that his finger tighten around John’s shoulder and then the eyes that were full of love only a year back when they first fell on Mary Morstan and are now filled to the brim with sadness focus on him in surprise.

“What-“

“You remembered? Tell me, John! How much do you remember? When-“ he is rambling, he knows he is, and under his clumsily tumbling words, John’s face hardens and a curtain of steel falls behind his eyes, covering the sadness there.

“No. I read about it. I read everything there was on my blog. About Moriarty. About you faking your own death. Funny thing, how someone you trusted can do that to you, hm?”

Sherlock doesn’t like the tone of John’s voice now, bitter and tired. This is the part that never came when he first came back.

 

_Kisses. Tears between kisses. Anger and insults spoken lovingly._

_Days when he wouldn’t let go of Sherlock’s hand, days when he would come running into the bathroom while Sherlock was in the shower because he’d heard a sound and had to make sure Sherlock was still there._

_Days of possessiveness, when he would not let go of Sherlock’s naked body, covering it in bites and marks simply to scream from the rooftops whom he belonged to and that he was nobody else’s to take._

_Relief. Always relief when Sherlock came home from cases._

 

John seems to be in a dark place, a place where all his confusion and pain and sadness pile up and wash over him in gigantic waves, pulling him down, down until he can’t see the light anymore. He doesn’t _remember_ what he’s read about in the words of this strange other-John and reacts the way you’d expect him to when one reads that his best friend faked his death to go on a jolly spree and hunt a couple of criminals.

“John-“ he tries carefully, but his doctor looks like a caged animal. Ready to lash out, to fight his way out now, away, away from everything (everyone) that’s hurting it.

“Well, at least with Mary I know she’ll stay dead.”

oOo

Of course it was all just a matter of time. Mary knew it, he knew it. That doesn’t mean it was easy when the day came. And it’s definitely not easy now that the day is over. To be honest, it just seems to have gotten progressively worse ever since the day crept closer to being over.

He knows he could’ve stayed with Greg or Mike – both have invited him. Mrs. Hudson had offered to stick around the small flat for a couple of days, but he can’t ask that of her. (And if she leaves Baker Street, what will Sherlock do? He’s not made (meant) to be alone.) John can’t ask any of his friends to let him be a burden, because he can’t even remember much of Greg or Mrs. Hudson and Mike has a family of his own. They don’t need a grieving man around the house.

At least there is not much that reminds him of Mary in the flat – towards the end, they had been at the hospital more often than not, and most of her clothes are either there or far back in the closet. There isn’t much more. The odd photo, and a second tooth-brush next to the sink.

 

_There are days when he can’t even bear to look towards the bedroom at the end of the small hallway and he goes to the bathroom with his head hung low._

_Other days, he’ll find the odd... thing lying forgotten under a cushion or the sofa or in a drawer, and the memories almost choke him._

_His smell fades from the room eventually, but not from his belongings._

_It gets easier over the weeks, months. Easier, but not better._

_He is everywhere. And yet he’s gone. John sits in 221B alone, in the flat that is too big for him. Too empty._

Headaches. They always come with the memories, and he can’t tell if he feels the burn behind his eyes because of the physical pain or the images and emotions that have just washed over him.

A fading echo of loss and pain remains in his heart and he thinks that this is how mourning widowers should feel. Truth is, despite being happy with each other, and despite the marriage, he and Mary have both been overly aware of how this was going to end. And now that it has, it’s just over. So instead of thinking about his dead wife, instead of mourning her, John Watson thinks about Sherlock.

Sherlock, whom he quite apparently has buried, too.

Mary’s read the blog. It seems like everyone in the world has. Only John hesitated for the longest of times, and not just because the doctors said not to jinx his memories. He didn’t want to know. He was afraid of what he’d find out. About himself, about Sherlock. About the life of this other John, the John he can’t remember, the John who shoots cabbies for Sherlock Holmes after knowing him for one day.

(Of course he has shot the kidnapper not long after he came back from the hospital to the life he’s lived for years and can’t remember, but that was different. He thinks it was, at least.)

A week ago, Mary, weak from the treatment that was supposed to make her feel better, has asked him to read the blog. He didn’t want to, not even back then, but her once clear blue eyes, dimmed with pain and the awareness of imminent death had looked at him as if she wanted to make him see something, and he gave in and went home.

He spent hours reading about Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. And he’s not through with it yet. He stopped when John buried his best friend, because his Mary was dying in a hospital and he couldn’t bear another death. As it is, the knowledge is edged into his mind and although he can’t remember it, the fact remains that the two people that apparently meant most to him have died under his hands.

With the exception, of course, that Sherlock always has to have the last word, even with death. And Mary won’t.

Frankly, he doesn’t know why Mary wanted him to read it. So he would remember Sherlock and started feeling close to him again? So that they could be best-friends-for-life after her death? Did Mary just worry about him being alone?

Because that’s what people seem to do lately. Worry about him being alone. John doesn’t worry about that. He worries about being with someone, because his record so far is that two people dear to him have died (and one of them has returned). So, instead of saving lives, he is sort of like a bad luck charm to everyone, it seems.

The burning in his eyes gets stronger again, so he blinks resolutely and clenches his fists. Maybe he should make tea. It’s familiar movements and there has always been something calming in the way the tea slowly colours the boiling water. Tentacles of flavour and colour creeping through water, seeping out of the tea bag, reaching around until they take over completely, until nothing remains of what came out of the tap-

These are very Sherlockian thoughts and observations, John realizes. He makes his way to the kitchen, thinking that maybe he shouldn’t have been so awful to Sherlock. After all, the genius had been there for the funeral, had offered support. (Had been the only one whose touch did not make John want to crawl out of his skin.) His right hand trembles when he reaches for the kettle. And this is when he hears the voice.

 

_“Stop there.”_

 

The voice is calm, yet urgent. And it’s unmistakably Sherlock’s voice. In his head.

_“Stay exactly where you are. Don’t move.”_

 

Out of instinct he freezes, and his eyes search the ceiling for something. The overwhelming urge to run, to shout, to plead rolls over him in waves and his knuckles turn white when he grips the countertop to steady himself.

The headache is pounding behind John’s eyes now and when he can’t hold back the grunt anymore, the pictures finally break free, hitting him like a truck at full speed, swallowing him up until the movie that plays out in his hand tells him a long forgotten story.

 

_A bank. Yellow paint, signalling numbers, a code, a secret. Tea. “I’m Sherlock Holmes and I always work alone because no one else can compete with my massive intellect!”Ancient tea pots, a circus, tattoos. A crossbow, Sherlock dashing and daring. (Late.)_

_A big yellow smiley face, rigged with bullets. “I’ve disappointed you.” He has, but John follows him anyway. The pool. The look on Sherlock’s face when John is decked out in explosives. For a moment, their friendship threatening to dissolve. Moriarty. They’re ready to die._

_They don’t die, and Sherlock finds The Woman. Buckingham Palace. An ashtray. “We solve crimes. I blog about it, and he forgets his pants.“ An American on Mrs. Hudson’s bins. Sherlock in love? Jealousy._

_A bloody harpoon. A murderous dog, a glowing bunny. “I don’t have friends.” Pain. “I’ve just got one.” Relief._

_Fame. A deerstalker. A good old-fashioned villain. A trial. Sherlock the fraud, on the run – and John running with him. Mrs. Hudson shot, Sherlock alone. Lies, a hospital, a rooftop – a Fall. A funeral. “One more miracle, Sherlock, for me, don't be...dead.“_

 

When John blinks his eyes open, he can only slowly focus on the present. Lying on his back on the kitchen floor he remembers, everything until the Fall. The big cases, the smaller ones. Days and nights at Baker Street, spend with endless wailing of the violin and constant typing. The smell of tea and chemicals and Sherlock. Running and collapsing in laughter.

Something hot runs down John’s temple and disappears in his hair. It’s a single tear, heavy with the weight of loneliness, and sadness, and tragic loss.

 

_“Take my hand!”_

Sherlock’s voice is in his head and he blinks once, twice, before slowly getting on his knees and then on his feet. He grabs his jacket. Leaves behind the flat of a dead wife and her widower.

oOo

The doorbell is a sound Sherlock has not heard in months so he can’t really be blamed for not recognizing it at first. After all, Mycroft comes and goes as he pleases although Sherlock most certainly did not give him a key and Mrs. Hudson usually knocks-and-enters straight away. And so it takes the genius a couple of seconds before his brain sets upon analyzing the door bell. Familiar information floods his mind – the ring is too long for it to come from a client, even though it’s hesitant. Not Lestrade, either, so... since that is everyone Sherlock can think of, it only leaves one person.

Mrs. Hudson opens, as usual when Sherlock can’t be bothered, while upstairs in 221B the genius looks around, for the first time in a long time uncertain of what to do with himself. How does the flat look? Messy like usual. More messy? Who cares. Certainly not Sherlock.

Except the part in every human’s brain (even in Sherlock’s) that wants to show off and rub into John’s face what he’s missing in cosy 221B Baker Street because he had to go and marry some dead woman- oh yes, she’s dead, so maybe not much to rub in after all- anyway, that part of Sherlock’s brain wants to see John 221B and everything that comes with it and it wants John to _miss_ it.

There are steps on the stairs now, slowly, carefully measuring steps, and Sherlock decides that whatever state the flat is in at the moment, it can’t be helped. He’s wearing a disturbing combination of dress shirt – still from the funeral – and pyjama bottoms and his hair is flattened at parts while voluminous at others from where safety goggles had been wrapped around his head earlier. All of that can’t be helped, either.

It’s not like he has to make an effort, anyway.

 

_Warm hands thread through his hair and get caught in the curls. The repetitive motions of smoothing them out, untangling them, lulls Sherlock into a comfortable state halfway between sleepy and aroused._

_“I like that I’m the only one who gets to see you like this,” the soft voice of the man petting him barely makes it through the haze of relaxation and Sherlock has to concentrate on the words to even form an answer._

_“You told me you liked the ‘purple shirt of sex’.” He is too relaxed to even scoff._

_He earns a soft chuckle for that, while the fingers massage his scalp relentlessly. “I do. But people see you in that shirt every day. Hell, people even see you naked more than is probably considered normal for a man in a relationship.”_

_Sherlock wishes he would shut up so he could sink into the feeling of being loved and never break to the surface again. Then again, if he can hear the voice until the end of his days, it won’t be enough. Never stop talking, please, he thinks. “You don’t mind,” he replies, realizing that is voice is about one octave deeper than usual. It rumbles through his chest. He feels the vibrations._

_“No, I don’t mind. Because I get to see you like this, with your guards down, making no effort at all, and I love it.”_

_Sherlock loves_ him.

 

“Hey, Sherlock,” John says, standing in the door and looking about as uncomfortable as humanly possible. When did he start feeling like that at the sight of his former flat mate and the flat he called home for a small eternity?

“John,” he acknowledges, managing to sound neither as wondrous nor as guarded as he feels like. “Come in,” he adds when John makes no move to do so, and starts picking up the random thing off John’s chair (of course it’s John’s chair, it will always be John’s chair, even after they’ll both be dead and no one will sit in it anymore). He takes a couple of papers and Billy away and tosses them on the cluttered table before making room, backing away, to watch John.

John, who smiles weakly.

“Reminds me of the day you asked me to move in,” he says, and from the look on both their faces, they both thought of that. Sherlock tries not to be in pain and fails miserably. To give his brain something to do, he asks the same question he has asked before, at the funeral only hours earlier. Only this time, he doesn’t make it sound like a question.

“You do remember then.” How much did John remember before, though? He knew Sherlock asked him to move in with him, did he? Or just them meeting at Bart’s?

However, this time Sherlock is apparently destined to receive answers because John actually moves to sit down on the edge of his chair (it’s a beginning, John back in his chair) and tells him: “Yes. I... I remembered a lot, earlier. When I was back at the flat.” The flat. Not ‘my flat’ or ‘our flat’. It’s not home for him, not anymore. Maybe it has never been, Sherlock selfishly hopes.

“Do you need me to confirm any of your memories then?” he asks and jubilates because even if John only came here for that, he came here, he is here, his presence fills the flat and how can Sherlock not be absolutely amazed by this? Even if John only came here to use the toilet, it would be the most glorious five minutes of Sherlock’s past months.

It’s pathetic, he’s pathetic, he knows he is. Turned into a creature of emotion, rational thinking put aside. But if one human in this whole world is important, then it’s John Watson, who followed Sherlock without a second thought, who told him he was brilliant and who always believed in him. Sherlock adores him and if that means pain, insanity and pathetic concentration on getting attention for whatever reason, then so it shall be.

“No. No, that’s not why I came here,” John tells him fast. The rapidness of his words shows the turmoil of emotions inside him and Sherlock blinks when he realizes that John came here for comfort.

 

_People don’t come to him for comfort, so it surprises him when he finds that some people actually do. And, in turn, he finds himself offering it to people. Mrs. Hudson, when the Americans hit her. Mrs. Hudson again when an old lady is found dead and the tabloids make a big story out of how she’d lived in an abusive relationship for over forty years._

_And of course there’s him, always him. After particularly gruesome cases or when he’s just a bit down, he’ll come to rest his head on Sherlock’s shoulder during experiments or hold him close at nights because it calms him down._

_Sherlock doesn’t do soothing cooing, but people nevertheless take comfort in him._

 

“You could make tea,” he offers and thinks that maybe he is supposed to make it for John? But John smiles his brilliant smile, the first in a long time, and shrugs out of his jacket before setting on the familiar task.

“At least I know it’s not drugged if I make it myself,” John comments when he passes Sherlock a mug and sits down in his chair again (this time, he leans back and this is how it’s supposed to be).

“It was one time and besides, it wasn’t drugged after all,” Sherlock argues back and can’t help but grin into his tea when John grunts non-committal.

He wants to know how much John remembers, what exactly, wants to dissect every single memory, wants to relive them all with John if that means he can have old-John back that way, but if he’s clever, maybe he can keep John – this one or the old one – for a lot longer. John can’t stand being at the flat of his dead wife and he needs a place to feel safe. Why not Baker Street with its body parts, unusable fridge and cluttered mess? Why not with Sherlock? Why not at _home_?

John is sitting in his chair, there’s a fire going and the smell of tea fills the flat. Sherlock plays Tchaikovsky because John likes that and although it’s nowhere near what he could do, it’s enough for his doctor. Sherlock has the suspicion that he could play ‘Row row row the boat’ and John wouldn’t be able to distinguish it from Bach and the thought puts a smile on his face. He quickly turns to the window, but even when he can’t see John, he knows he’s here. The flat feels different. Alive.

Perfect, for the first time in forever.

When he stops playing, finally, long after a sensible bedtime, John sighs. “That was beautiful. I’ve... missed this.”

Sherlock almost says ‘I’ve missed you, too’, but he doesn’t because that’s not what John said and he doesn’t do sentiment anyway.

 

_He’s back from a stupid, boring congress in Scotland. Dared to leave for three days (and, more importantly, three nights) and he immediately narrows his eyes when he sees Sherlock’s sleepless state. But how was he supposed to sleep alone?_

_Lack of sleep has never been a problem before, but now that Sherlock’s used to the constant presence around, he finds it impossible to obey the abhorrent bodily need for rest. Instead of talking, he plays the violin until his track of thought becomes to imprecise to do it properly._

_A warm hand carefully takes the beloved instrument from his hands, guides him to the bedroom, tucks him in. “That was beautiful. I’ve missed you.”_

_He mumbles back a half-asleep “I’ve missed you, too” and adds a supposedly aloof “obviously” that fades into a yawn and then there’s a warm body curling around him and he can go to sleep._

 

So Sherlock says something else. “You could stay.”

He’s not talking _tonight_ , and John knows this.

“Your room is still there,” Sherlock ventures on carefully and hopes with every fibre of his being that with the memories at least a bit of his John is hidden in the man in the opposite chair, marked by loss and more loss.

“I thought you’d turn it into a laboratory maybe?” John asks, not without amusement, and Sherlock is so amazed by the fact that John remembers that fragment of information that is clearly after the Fall in their timeline that he forgets to be careful and full on pouts because he wanted to (what good was the empty room if not being used as a laboratory?) but- “Mrs. Hudson wouldn’t let me.”

And John laughs, a startling sound after all the sadness, and gets up, slowly moving to the door. He turns in the frame. “Thank you. For everything.” He blinks before adding another thing. “I know I’ve not been- well, I know that a lot has changed. But... I remember you, and us. You’re my best friend. I’m sorry this is hard on you, too.”

While Sherlock ponders what he can possibly reply to that, John trudges up the stairs to his old room and leaves the detective to his pondering. Which mainly spirals around the fact that if John remembers everything until the Fall, and he knows that Sherlock came back, then why- why doesn’t he- Should he not-

He told Sherlock how he felt the day the detective stood in the flat, playing the violin, as if the past six months had not happened, as if he hadn’t been dead. John was angry, but so relieved and so happy to have been given a second chance that it gave him the courage to say what he’d meant to say at the grave and yet never could.

But now... John doesn’t-

Sherlock hears him walking around upstairs and despite everything, he is happy. John is back at Baker Street and they are best friends. It shouldn’t mean as much as it does. But on this day, the day that Mary Morstan was buried, Sherlock Holmes came back to life.

And what a wonderful life it is.

oOo

John moves back into 221B Baker Street and just like the first time he’d done so, he is surprised at how little things he actually possesses. However, since the flat has been and will always be cluttered with Sherlock’s numerous belongings (and the belongings that don’t necessarily belong to Sherlock but found their way into the flat anyway, such as a couple of DI badges and body parts of unlucky London citizens), it doesn’t matter what John brings.

For all Sherlock cares, John could come naked. It doesn’t matter, as long as he is here. The flat is full of John again, every particle in the flat has been in touch with John’s body, has been inhaled into John’s lungs and therefore is part of John. Sherlock goes so far as to analyze the air in the flat in secret and although he finds no significant difference, he knows it’s there and it puts him into a good mood.

The good mood only lasts for a couple of days, though, until the nagging feeling of why John isn’t remembering _more_ , isn’t feeling _more_ comes back and grabs hold of Sherlock with icy claws. Like a dog that has its jaws locked around a bone, Sherlock’s brain circles around the same thoughts endlessly.

He knows he should move on and don’t look back. But almost every night, he would visit the good times in his dreams until he stops sleeping again, this time not because John is not around, but _because_ John is around, upstairs, in his own stupid bed and sleeping by himself and is not where he is supposed to be.

“You’re insatiable,” Mycroft tells Sherlock and wisely stays in a safe distance of everything throw-worthy. “He came back to you despite having no reason to, and he remembers all of your little adventures. You have everything you could possibly want, without deserving it, and yet you crave more.”

“Addict,” Sherlock comments drily and thinks about adding something about pastries and the newly tailored dress shirt Mycroft is wearing to hide two extra pounds, but then decides against it because even he is getting bored of the diet jabs. He needs something new... maybe if Mycroft had one of his once-in-a-decade ill-judged attempts of coitus with another human being desperate enough to touch him-

“Predictable and ill-befitting,” Mycroft scoffs and Sherlock isn’t sure if his brother has been reading his thoughts or reacting to his statement.

Back to the fat-jabs then. “Better ill-befitting than ill-fitting. I’m talking about your trousers that are too tight, in case you didn’t notice.”

A trade-mark Mycroftian eyeroll is Sherlock’s reward and then he leaves without trying to get Sherlock to work on a case for him which Sherlock considers success. Although, of course, Mycroft is right and he’s being insatiable and so hopelessly in love he feels like dying.

 

_“Why is it painful? Is it supposed to be painful?”_

_He looks up, concerned, the doctor in him already on alert. “What is painful?”_

_“Being in love!” Sherlock says and pokes at his chest to demonstrate his point. “These insipid movies never picture it as painful.”_

_“It’s- it’s not painful. Not always, anyway. Not when it’s reciprocated.” He pauses, then narrows his eyes. “Are you sure you’re not having a heart attack? Or did you accidentally breathe in something poisonous earlier? I told you self-experiments were off-limit!”_

_Sherlock gives him a grumpy look. “Don’t be dull, I’m not having a heart attack. I thought you were a doctor! Shouldn’t you be able to recognize one when you see one?”_

_He glares back until Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Back to the point – it’s painful when you’re not here. Or when I think of you being gone.”_

_“You hardly notice when I’m out! You keep talking to me even if I’m not here,” his doctor argues back good-naturedly, but there’s this softness in his eyes Sherlock has come to recognize as his ‘you are being adorable and lovely and have no idea you are’ look. Which of course counterpoints the ‘having no idea you are’ part because obviously Sherlock can see it in his eyes._

_“You’re being deliberately obtuse and I object.”_

_A sigh. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? It’s normal to feel like that when you’re completely mad for someone. Especially in the beginning of a relationship. You never want them to leave your side and when they do, you feel heartbroken until they return.”_

_Sherlock ponders that for a while. Then, he carefully observes: “I don’t think it will ever stop.”_

_And he earns the smile, the brilliant smile, followed by a kiss. “I’ll try and not be away then.”_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! Hope you enjoyed this little thing.  
> Thank you so much for kudos and comments!!  
> Love, Hanna

The old life of making tea and hunting criminals takes John’s mind off anything that is troubling him – Mary’s death, the fact that he’s still missing almost a year worth of memories and a moody Sherlock. He even tries blogging again, by the encouragement of the doctors, Mrs. Hudson, Greg and even Sherlock (“I need clients again and the common folk respond to your mediocre writing better than to the scientific valuable write-ups I provide.”) and is fairly successful with it, considering that after two weeks of near-silence from people who obviously need help but don’t come because Sherlock didn’t consult for a couple of months apparently, they have their usual flow of boring and not-so boring cases.

Sherlock won’t talk about his consulting break and John remembers enough of Mycroft not to want to ask him about it although he probably knows. At least he can go out with Greg again, and talk to most of his friends now that he actually remembers having a shared history with them. Especially Greg seems glad about it and despite there still being a big gap in John’s mind, Greg is rarely reminded of that since John is in many ways himself again. Or, well, his old self. Which sort of is himself, of course, but it’s complicated-

It’s a bit confusing at times and John has headaches now - not from remembering, but from mixing up the sort of double life he’s lived ever since being drugged.

On the one hand, there’s his life up until the Fall, which is, after all, the _majority_ of his life. Then, there’s blackness. And then there’s the memories of his second, new-John life that now seem like a dream, like a life someone else lived and that’s only told to John, when in fact it’s the life he’s lived for a while now.

John doesn’t know who he is anymore.

 

oOo

_The sadness is overwhelming. It feels like whenever John wakes in the mornings, he immediately is up to his chin in water, struggling, paddling to keep his head up, to not simply drown. Some days, drowning seems easier and he lets the sadness wash over his head and doesn’t move from the couch._

_He could never say the words that are now on his tongue to the black headstone, simply because he wants to hear a reply – even if it’s just a quirked eyebrow or a sarcastic scoff. He stops going to therapy when his therapist won’t stop nagging him about it. She also nags a lot about going to anonymous groups, to try and embrace it. “Being gay is not a stigma nowadays, John.”_

_It’s not about being gay. Hell, he’s not even sure if he is gay. Sure, he grew up with solid labels on things. If you were a man and liked women, it was not only heterosexual, it was_ normal. _His sister ended up with Clara, so she was not only a lesbian, but also not normal. But, it’s not about labels anymore, though. Why does everything have to have labels? He distinctly remembers a night when Harry was supposed to babysit him and instead fooled around with Tom Miller on the sofa in the living room when she’d thought he’d gone to bed. And that was after she’d come out to their parents._

_And while for the longest time John believed in labels and was always the first to staunchly defend his heterosexuality, John now believes that falling in love is something that happens with a person and not with a gender. It has to be that way, because he can’t explain his own feelings in any other way._

_His feelings being sadness and excruciating pain when the understanding seeped in that the person he’d lived with for one and a half year, the person he’d considered his best friend was now dead. And, in the light of day, his feelings might have been so much deeper than he’d ever realized when Sherlock was still alive._

_Sherlock might have been rubbish at relationships – his words – and probably didn’t recognize the signs of having a best friend until John shouted it at him, but the thing was: John has never been friends with anyone like he was with Sherlock. Being with him was the most intense thing John had ever felt and he only now realizes that this went beyond any form of simple friendship._

_Thing is, now Sherlock is dead._

_John thinks about talking to Greg, but ultimately decides against it, mostly because on bad days, he can’t even say Sherlock’s name without clenching his fists and going silent._

_And then the bastard is back and while John is angry beyond belief that it was all just a trick, the foremost thing he feels is thankfulness. He’s so thankful for being given another chance that he tells Sherlock everything, while the shopping remains on the steps outside 221B, completely forgotten, and the genius still stands with his violin and bow in hands, in the middle of the flat. He looks as if he only understands half of what John says, and blinks uncomprehendingly about twice a minute, but when John finishes, standing tall and proud (and only slightly ready to faint because Sherlock is not dead), Sherlock blinks a bit more, like a tortoise leaving it’s shell after a long winter, surprised to find that the sun is out and shining and-_

John startles awake. Oh God. Oh GOD.

oOo

Simply because he is absolutely not ready to face the day (or Sherlock or basically anything that’s not the spot of ceiling with the chipped paint right above his bed), John doesn’t get up in the morning. Then again, it’s just about half past four when he wakes up from dreaming and remembering anyway, and if he got up now, Sherlock might get suspicious and a suspicious Sherlock is worse than a moody Sherlock.

John is convinced the detective will be able to read everything that happened inside his head the moment he faces him and since John doesn’t even understand himself what the bloody fuck is going on, he most definitely does not need a certain consulting detective to act condescending and try to analyse him.

Yes, so, back to the topic. What the fuck.

The John in his dreams had seemed so certain of everything. Certain about his feelings, all of the sudden. Certain about what to say. Like a man on his way to certain death, he had absolutely nothing to fear and the sheer gratefulness for being given a second chance had given him wings, allowed him to simply let it all go.

He had been completely in love with Sherlock Holmes.

Had been? Is. Was? Is now? Again? Still?

John, in bed, tries desperately to find _any_ feelings towards Sherlock. Admiration. Anger, at times. Absolute trust. The urge to be around him that had been so overbearing after Mary’s death-

Mary. Whenever John thinks of love, he thinks of Mary. Thinks of the woman with the clear blue eyes that had sparkled in the sunlight, even when therapy was taking its toll. The thankfulness in her eyes when he did everything he possibly could to somehow make her feel better (always the hope that even with the incurability of her brain cancer and the fact that he was no oncologist, he would maybe find the magical cure for her).

But after her death, the thought of loving someone has become a strange, abstract concept.

But - and here’s another but, they seem to chase each other around John’s head now, a constant stream of disagreement – he needed to be with Sherlock, with the only person that even sprung to his mind as being tolerable to be around. For God’s sake, he broke down in the old flat and heard Sherlock’s bloody voice. And, subsequently, felt at home and peace when he came back to 221B again.

Sherlock might be an arsehole of first degree, but John knows he’ll always be there. And obviously John is never going to leave his side, unless he wants him to. He’ll gladly shoot his way through cabbies and kidnappers, if that’s what it takes. The pain of the loss of his best friend is right up there with the pain about Mary’s death, ever present in John’s mind.

John’s forehead crinkles while he tries to understand what is going on. Maybe... it’s gratefulness for everything Sherlock’s done for him. And maybe, like with the pain about Mary’s loss that keeps mixing up with the memories of burying Sherlock, the love he felt for Mary is like... a residual that now is projected on Sherlock?

Could he forget LOVING someone? Maybe... maybe the memory is not a memory at all, but a dream. Sure, he’s got a headache, but people get headaches all the time.

Sherlock is beautiful, and brilliant and-

Then John realizes neither Greg nor Mike are “beautiful” in his eyes, and as much as he likes them, there will always be Sherlock and Sherlock will always be John’s number one priority. It took John almost two years to realize he was in love with Sherlock Holmes the first time, and he was happy after that. This time around, the realization is mixed with insecurity, nausea and doubt – because he doesn’t even know how Sherlock feels about this. He doesn’t do sentiment, after all. He’s Sherlock Holmes, the man who doesn’t love.

(The man with only one friend, his best friend. The man whom John Watson wholeheartedly belongs to, in the best sense.)

John realizes he does need Sherlock now, to help him understand.

oOo

“I need to talk to you,” John requests after a day of tip-toeing around the flat and trying to convince himself to speak up, and realizes that only bad things ever follow that expression. Sherlock remains unbothered by its dreadful implications, though, and looks up from the magazine he’s reading. “It’s about, uhm, Mary.” After a moment, he adds: “And feelings.”

If Sherlock is currently skinning and flaring him in his mind, at least he doesn’t show it, for which John is grateful. He does, however, quip: “Us, talking about feelings? Should I call the _Sun_?”

“We’ll tape it for them,” John replies drily, not even bothering to react to the teasing, but glad about the small lightening of mood. He’s not sure if that was Sherlock’s intention or not. You can seldom be sure about such things with the genius.

“Make sure to send a tape to Mycroft, too. I removed all of his new bugs last week,” Sherlock tells him, a small smile playing around his lips, but then his face becomes clear of everything again, more similar to a marble statue than some of the actual statues at the British Museum, and he gestures for John to ask what he wants to ask.

“You said once that maybe the Woman loved you,” John starts, carefully. Sherlock watches him. “So... you are able to recognize love when you see it. Not just attraction. Love.” He stops again and Sherlock doesn’t seem inclined to interrupt, so he takes it as a sign to continue. “Do you believe I loved Mary?”

John has not counted on Sherlock to actually consider the question, which is why he’s more surprised than is due when the man in the other chair narrows his eyes on him and tries to deduce not only where that question came from, but also possible answers to it. John’s seen him do it hundreds of times with clients and it’s strange to be the object of that reserved-for-work stare.

Whenever Sherlock, on a daily basis, deduces things from him, it’s different. His eyes are not as cold, not as analysing as they are now and usually he does it without sparing John a second glance. All this... scientific attention now is unsettling.

Finally, his friend seems to have come to a conclusion. “You have been drawn to Mary Morstan from the first moment you laid eyes on her; you found her intriguing in the same way I find good crimes intriguing. On our first night out, at Angelo’s I told you that I considered myself married to my work.”

The implication is clear, so clear that Sherlock can’t be bothered to even say it out loud. Sherlock loves the work, and he’s married to it. John loves Mary, so he was married to her. However – this is not the general feeling John gets from this answer. In fact, that’s not even close to what he understand when Sherlock tells him this. John understands something completely different (at least he thinks he does.)

“Why would you say I was ‘intrigued’ by Mary? She’s not... she was not like your work. I didn’t see her the way you see the Work.” Or does he?

John hopes when he came to Sherlock had been to achieve some sort of clarity about himself, his feelings, his- everything. But now, only a couple of sentences into this conversation, he’s even more confused than before.

Didn’t he love Mary? Does he love Sherlock? Did he love Sherlock like he (believed he) loved Mary? Can Sherlock feel the same? And if he can, does he?

And, most important: is he, John, the wreck he believes himself he is? Because there is no way that one person can feel that confused and fucked up. John is not at home in his own head anymore, fears to go mad – or to already have gone mad – with the two lives of John Watson he now remembers. And Sherlock, his best friend in the whole world and the person he thinks he’ll spend the rest of his life with, just sits there, imperious and smart and so unmoved that John can barely breathe.

However, Sherlock wouldn’t be Sherlock if he didn’t recognize the signs of an uprising panic attack and before John can blink twice, the detective is kneeling before him, one hand on John’s that is clenched into a fist on the armrest of his chair, the other lightly resting on his shoulder, the one with the scar, and he tells him to breathe. “Slowly. In and out.” He’s almost compassionate. “Snap out of it.” Or, well, as compassionate as Sherlock can get.

His cup of tea is handed to him and after a couple of more deep breaths and sips of his lukewarm tea, John feels better. Well, not better, but calmer. Sherlock sits back in his chair, observing him. When he’s sure John is alright, he speaks up again.

“You _can_ compare Mary and the Work. It’s your nature, john. You’re a doctor, and you’re passionate about it. Your whole existence is based on the need to fix things. To repair damage, to heal. You are naturally drawn towards the broken so you can fix it. That’s what makes you less of an incompetent idiot than the other people working in your field.”

John recognizes this as a compliment, in the weird way Sherlock usually puts the rare ones he makes, but it’s not the compliment that sticks in his mind. It’s the observation Sherlock has made. ‘You are naturally drawn towards the broken so you can fix it.’

“Are you saying I didn’t love Mary?” John simply can’t decide if he is meant to be insulted or angry or sad or confused, so he sounds like everything at once, hoping that talking to a genius will help him understand while at the same time realizing that said genius is self-proclaimed sociopath Sherlock Holmes and that he must be completely mad for even asking him.

Sherlock’s face is unreadable and John recognizes it as the carefully crafted mask, even if he isn’t sure why his best friend is putting it on now of all times. “I believe you loved Mary Morstan. Love...” it’s the first time John sees him take a pause mid-sentence to think about something, “is a concept strange to me. But the combination of sexual attraction and sentiment expressed towards her allow the conclusion that yes, you have loved Mary.”

John goes quiet for a moment, thinks intently about what the genius has said. And the longer he thinks, the more clear it gets for him that this is not necessarily all Sherlock thinks. Or wanted to say. He needs to know. “The way you said it before it sounded like you wanted to say that I... only loved the, uh, the idea of having someone _like_ Mary. Someone... broken.”

The detective looks like he desperately wants to do anything else – dying of lung failure even – rather than talking about this. John knows this, but he feels like he needs to be selfish once in their shared life now. Understanding this is so very important and maybe even a possible step towards recovering the rest of his memory, so if Sherlock really cares about him at all, he will endure this. A pointed look from John finally sets him to answer the question. “You are capable of acting for more than just one reason, as simple as you might be at times.”

“So you’re saying I thought I loved her but my unconsciousness simply liked her because I thought I could fix her?” They really need to stop referring to people as something that needs to be fixed – it’s wrong, it’s inhuman, it’s... well, something Sherlock would say.

John tastes bile, mostly because he is so incredibly disgusted with himself, with the way he talks about his dead wife, the way he discovers things about himself and also a bit disgusted with Sherlock who talks to him like... well, one of the clients, someone who needs to be taken apart, dishevelled, until he gets to the core of truth.

But John asked him, didn’t he? He wanted to hear this. Well, no. He didn’t want to hear this. He wanted to hear _something_ else – just something that doesn’t scream he’s a crazy person.

It’s wrong to think of Sherlock as inhuman. There have been countless occasions on which he has proven the opposite and John knows this best. It’s just easier to be disgusted with the way Sherlock uncovers his motives than to be solely disgusted by himself and himself alone.

“Are you even listening to the words I say?” Sherlock asks, impatiently and deeply annoyed. “I’m saying you can have more than one motive, and the love-one doesn’t rule out the existence of your psychological need to fix people. The world is rarely black and white.”

 

_“Sherlock, you need to come to the Yard with me. I know you did this for John and, for God’s sake, the psycho deserved it – but you were involved in the death of this man and you need to make a statement.”_

_“Don’t be ridiculous, Lestrade. You and me know I could have prevented the death of that man and deliberately did not. What kind of statement am I supposed to make? Just do something to bail me out of the case and leave me alone. I need to stay here.”_

_The voices sound like from a dream, but John recognizes them as Sherlock and Greg. Sherlock, who did… something. Something not-good, apparently. But he had a good reason, so doesn’t that make up for it being a bad thing?_

_„Don't make people into heroes, John. Heroes don't exist and if they did I wouldn't be one of them.“_

_The world, it seems, is rarely black and white._

 

“John?” Sherlock’s voice hints at concern, the faintest touch of it, and John blinks away the sudden headache from remembering. He takes a sip of his tea too calm himself, but it’s cold now and does nothing to make him feel better. He can feel it running down his throat in icy lines, giving the sudden fear he feels a physical representation.

People rarely act black or white, but he has been at war (fighting for the good cause, for the right cause?), he has lost his best friend to the psycho named Jim Moriarty, has lived through loss and the madness of finding someone he believed was dead back with the living. He has suffered memory loss, the loss of his identity. Has suffered the loss of his wife. Maybe he is permanently damaged. Maybe the world is only black or white for him.

“What if- what if I’m just some weird guy who... who is drawn to broken people?” Immediately after saying that, John realizes how horrible it sounds, but he can’t take it back anymore.

Sherlock doesn’t move a muscle, but somehow he manages to exude a sudden coldness that hasn’t been there before. “Then, John, you certainly live with the right person, if you believe everyone we have ever encountered,” he says and although he is above letting emotion colour his voice, the ice with which he says it sends a shiver down John’s spine and leaves him wondering what he has done even long after Sherlock has disappeared into his bedroom and banged the door shut behind himself.

oOo

 

_“Why does Mycroft think you need to be... fixed?”_

_They’re in bed, and Sherlock would much rather be doing a million different things now – tasting every inch of gloriously naked skin under his hands is one of the most important of these things – than talk about his brother. He bites down hard on the closest available thing which happens to be the jugular vein of his lover and growls._

_“We’re talking about the same man who would command a nuclear attack on France if his favourite French patisserie would stop delivering croissants to his office.”_

_“They are rather good, though,” the doctor admits with an appreciative hum before yelping when Sherlock bites down again, this time a bit harder._

_He’s not supposed to eat Mycroft’s food. Or ideally not even breathe the same air like Mycroft. Maybe he will stop talking about the fat bastard if he gets an answer, though._

_“He is not the only one who thinks that. Everyone does, because everyone is dull and doesn’t understand the ways of my superior mind.”_

_“Mmh... They are stupid, then.” Warm hands finally move over his body in firm strokes, and Sherlock thinks that he’s finally moving on towards far more interesting things when two fingers tilt his chin up and he has to look straight into blue eyes that are fixed on his with a serious look in them. “You know you don’t need to be fixed, right? You’re not broken. You’re different, but that is not a bad thing. You’re wonderful, and strange, and completely mad. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with you.”_

 

There was a point in Sherlock’s life when he wasn’t pathetic and dull, a creature of emotions and feelings rather than of logic and science. But he left that point in life pretty much the night he sat at Angelo’s with John Watson for the first time and he’s never really missed it, not even when he was – urgh – heartbroken. But now, it seems the best thing that could happen to him.

For all that John remembers and for all he acts like his old John, Sherlock has tasted something sweet and succulent, has tasted love and being loved, and now it’s gone and old John isn’t enough anymore. Friendship isn’t enough anymore.

And John is this broken, fragile thing which Sherlock doesn’t know how to treat without shattering him because as it is he’s cutting himself on the shards that is John’s shattered life, he bleeds out and yet doesn’t stay away.

For a brief moment, Sherlock toys with the idea of just going out there and yelling at John, making him understand what he forgot, what he is doing to Sherlock everyday John’s _not loving him_ , but as quickly as the idea flares up, Sherlock extinguishes it again. After all, what could be the possible outcome of that? John doesn’t feel that way anymore, obviously, so the best case scenario would be that it would be awkward between them for the rest of their lives while John stayed with him and continued being his best friend. Worst case would obviously be that he left again.

Sherlock is not going to allow any of these scenarios, so he remains quiet. Silence in the flat, silence in his room. Him and his brain, the mind palace, thinking. Reliable things, things that will never leave him.

 

oOo

It becomes clear to John that even with the knowledge that he loves Sherlock, loves him more than someone loves their best friend, loves him more than he can even put in words because words are usually Sherlock’s area and they come hard to John nowadays – even with all that knowledge, John realizes they won’t make any progress together.

Sherlock is hurt (or at least acts like the equivalent of someone hurt if Sherlock would do hurt which he doesn’t because that’s below his dignity), John realizes this is almost certainly his fault and that he should say something, but he doesn’t know what to say. Again, words have always been Sherlock’s forte.

So while John feels like Sherlock, ironically, is the only safe and sane thing in this world where he’s been living two lives, where he’s been married to a dead woman and in love with his best friend, Sherlock acts like staying too close to John might make him catch stupid or normalcy and therefore keeps himself busy, mostly ignoring John.

At first, this gives John time to have a proper think, but when even Greg realizes that something between them is off, he obviously feels like he has to talk to them. Unfortunately, but predictable, really, Sherlock doesn’t take well to that. Five minutes after entering 221B, Greg leaves again, taking deep breaths to calm down and not kill Sherlock. This is when John decides he needs to apologize to Greg and maybe talk to him about the one thing or the other.

“Ta,” Greg says, still rightfully pissed at the local Hades-of-221-B, when John puts down a pint as a peace offering. For the first hour, they simply sip their drinks and follow the rugby match on TV, but they’re supporting neither of the teams, so that gives John the opportunity to finally address the matter at hand.

“I’m sorry Sherlock’s more of a prat than usual.”

Greg waves him off, a lot more peaceful than before. However, he does narrow his eyes a bit. “Why’s that, though? Did you chuck out one of his experiments again?”

If only, John wishes and answers honestly: “No. He’s not... he’s not taking it too well that I’m still not remembering everything. I mean, it’s like he waits for something to change and I just don’t know what it is.”

“And he gets annoyed with you for it,” Greg finishes, a dark look on his face. “I knew it would frustrate him sooner or later.”

John realizes his face looks as uncomprehending as he feels, with the distinct feeling that Greg knows something he doesn’t. Greg seems to realize the same thing because after a dance of looks on his face that seems to be his ‘I should probably tell him but shit I should not have said anything in the first place and why are we even talking about this’-expression, he tiredly rubs his eyes and explains himself.

“Look, the way I see it, you’re still the same man. Of course I’m glad you remember most of the stuff, but for all I care, it’s not important if you remember a couple of cases more or less or some jokes. You remember things slowly, and that’s okay. I don’t care. But Sherlock... did not take it well at all and obviously still doesn’t.”

John makes a sound that is understanding – so far, nothing new there. When Greg scoots a bit closer and lowers his voice, though, John realizes he’s about to be told something that is not necessarily something he was ever supposed to know.

“When Sanchez Sr. attacked you, Sherlock – and I can lose my job for telling you this but, well, when has that ever stopped me from letting you into cases anyway?” Greg laughs drily. “Sherlock found Sanchez, and a couple of hours later, Sanchez was dead. Of course there was no clue leading to Sherlock having done it – and I don’t think he did it, either,” the DI adds when John’s eyebrows narrow down disbelievingly. “But he practically admitted to having been involved. It’s the only time I’ve ever witnessed him to have become violent in any capacity and it took him two days to realize that with Sanchez’ death, the secret to what he’d done to you was lost.”

Well. That doesn’t sound like Sherlock at all and John is momentarily so lost in worrying about what had been going on with Sherlock that he completely misses the curious look Greg gives him.

“You know, he stayed in a chair next to you until you woke up. Didn’t even go home to shower or sleep or eat. And he tried finding a cure for you. Still hasn’t stopped, as far as I know. If I didn’t know better I’d say...” he trails off and John looks up sharply.

“What?”

“Well, all I’m saying is that he wants you to remember. And you and I know Sherlock, he rarely does something without an ulterior move. He wants you to remember because it means something good for him.”

Greg is watching John closely now, but John is too far away to notice right now. Greg’s words echo in his mind and when he feels a headache coming this time he knows it’s not because he’s remembering. It’s because these information are too confusing, to messy to process right now. The more he gets to know about his attack, about Sherlock about the time he’s missing, the more complicated it gets. John wants nothing more than clarity, but it’s like he’s diving in the ocean and the deeper he gets, the darker the water becomes.

What if- what if the reason for Sherlock’s anger, hell, rage, and everything else Greg told John just now, what if that had something to do with what John remembered? Something with the answer Sherlock gave him when he came back from the dead and John told him he loved him.

“Are you alright? Gone a bit pale there,” Greg asks, now more concerned than intrigued.

No, John is not right. How can he be? “Did I... did I talk to you about something important after Sherlock came back from hunting down Moriarty’s network?” John knows that Greg is his last hope now and that he’s become a bit desperate since he can neither understand his own past actions, nor those of Sherlock. From the way Greg looks sorry, though, he realizes that his hopes are going to be crushed in a second.

“No, nothing really important. We were both angry and came here for a pint or two. Ended up completely smashed, I think. But it was a Friday, so it wasn’t so bad.” Greg looks like he feels genuinely bad now for not being able to help John, but John’s initial disappointment is replaced by a curious track of thought.

The way he remembers it, Sherlock came back on a Wednesday night. Wednesday, John is pretty sure. If he went for a couple of drinks with Greg on Friday, that still leaves two nights and one day in between. They’re mates, best mates even, and John is relatively sure that if Sherlock came back and he was angry, he’d told Greg immediately or the morning after latest. Which he didn’t.

So what did he and Sherlock do during that time?

oOo

_“It’s really very inconvenient of you to be asleep right now, you know? Right now you’re about as useful as Billy and I don’t even have to leave the flat to talk to him.”_

_“I don’t suppose you can make notes at the moment.”_

_“... Smith can’t have stolen the jewels because she’s allergic to bees. Shouldn’t that be obvious?”_

_“The doctors say there is no reason for you not to wake up, so if you would do us both a favour now and follow their assumptions, I would appreciate it.”_

_“Oh, just to be clear, I’m obviously not going to leave without my blogger.”_

_Sherlock snores lightly, right next to his ear._

_“Am I supposed to tell you I love you so you can wake up? I’m not going to, in case you wondered. You’re not completely stupid, you know I do.”_

 

John startles awake, and just like he did in hospital, after being drugged by Sanchez and lying asleep for days, the first thing that comes to his mind and tumbles from his lips in the darkness and quiet of his room is one name.

“Sherlock?”

(Later, he will remember that it’s not the first thing he actually said upon waking up in hospital. Nevertheless, it had been the first thing on his mind.)

He is in love, and sees it clearly now. But what about Sherlock?

oOo

John wanders the familiar hallways of St. Bart’s for a while, uncertain of what he is about to do. Of what he is about to say. Maybe he won’t even get access to the file, he’s not a copper, after all. But then again, he’s talking Molly here and Molly will most likely not decline handing it over if he asks. In that respect, she is much like Greg.

He is briefly distracted by an incoming text message from Sherlock – who is at speaking terms with him at the moment, apparently – asking him to bring a foot (preferably male, but female would do, too) and when he doesn’t even question it and simply texts back a positive (with the addition that the foot stays in the assigned drawer in the fridge, thank you very much), John realizes that this is not within the norm of any friendship and it settles his indecisiveness for him. He needs to know what happened the day he lost the apparently most wonderful part of his life.

Molly looks up, always startled like a deer in headlights, and gives him a friendly but slightly confused smile when Sherlock doesn’t trail in seconds later. A quick glance around shows her that he hasn’t sneaked in earlier and John gives her a warm smile.

“Just me today. I think Sherlock is doing something with maggots. Or earthworms. Something without feet in any case.”

“Wonderful!” Molly exclaims before blushing in an alarming deep shade of red and hastily adds: “I mean, not really. Just... wonderful for him, I mean...” she trails of, a bit helpless.

John knows she’s not always the shy and insecure girl. When you talk to her without Sherlock around, she usually warms up after a couple of minutes and has proven to be a quite witty companion, her slightly strange mortician humour aside. Hell, John has seen her pureeing a brain once without batting an eyelash.

“Can I help you?” she asks, startling him out of his thoughts and he blinks once before concentrating on the task at hand.

“Yes, actually. I wondered if I could have a look at a file?”

“Oh, the poison case from this morning is still in progress, I’m afraid. It’s boring anyway- I mean, for Sherlock.” The blush fades mostly and only a faint pink now tints her cheeks.

“No, I’m here for an old case – the guy who, uhm, drugged me. Sanchez? Greg says he was found dead shortly later and... I guess I just want to look over it. You know... as part of getting to understand everything.” Okay, he’s playing the victim card here a bit, but if it helps...

Predictably, Molly gets serious and she nods. “Of course!”

And just like that, John is set in front of a computer, handed a paper file and a mug of tea and left alone.

oOo

_“The remains of Mr. Sanchez have been recovered after almost six hours of removing the debris of the warehouse that collapsed over him. Although the remains of rope were found around one wrist and what we suspect is the left ankle, it seems like an escape could have taken place if the victim chose to do so._

_Possible suicide?”_

_“Additional information: The toxicological analyses showed low levels of an as-of-yet unidentified sleeping pill in the victim’s bloodstream. A closer identification is impossible due to the little remains of Mr. Sanchez.”_

_“Remains found and categorized: Fractured skull, complete right arm and left forearm, major parts of the ribcage, right leg and left foot with ankle.”_

_“Explosion? Call M. Holmes about brother.”_

 

The notes are handwritten, in what John recognizes as Greg’s messy scribble. Of course there is an official autopsy record, signed by ‘M. Hooper’, as well as the official report on the investigations – although that stops rather abruptly at the end of a page, giving ‘accident’ as an explanation and thus ending the investigations effectively.

John knows enough to recognize this as Mycroft’s doing – and Greg’s notes lead to that conclusion, as well.

When Molly walks past, clutching two feet in a box to her chest, John calls out for her and waits until she puts down her things before pointing at the autopsy record. “Do you remember the case?”

She nods, hesitantly. “It was- there wasn’t much to look at really. What with the explosion. Just bits and pieces, really... We could recover most of the skull, that’s how we could identify him.”

“You say explosion, but there wasn’t a fire, was there?” John asks, looking over the photographs attached to the file. They are rather gruesome, but to be honest, he’s seen worse things in the fridge at Baker Street.

“No. I mean, yes,” she blushes and tries to sort through her thoughts. “The building collapsed over him and crushed him. I think they were talking about, uh, air compression, something like that? That the building collapsed through enormous pressure. Crushed Mr. Sanchez and reduced him to powder mostly.” She makes a face. “Not that I’m sorry for him, mind you.” Molly gives John a small smile, which he mirrors.

“Thank you, Molly,” he says, gathering his things. He has a lot to think about now, but while Molly wraps up the foot for Sherlock, he asks her one last thing. “It says ‘accident’ here – do you know why they came to that conclusion? Especially since Greg noticed rope around Sanchez’ limbs?”

Molly gives him a weary smile. “The file was closed before any actual investigations from the Yard started. Orders from above.” She hesitates for a moment and looks around as if she counts on being observed and then tells John: “Sherlock’s brother came here shortly after Mr. Sanchez’ body arrived. And then, a couple of hours later, I was told to do my report and close the case. I think that maybe Sherlock- not that he would do something like that- but, uh, I think Mr. Sanchez could have escaped the building if he’d been quick enough. He was given the chance...” she trails of, obviously unsure of how to voice her thoughts, but John understands her just fine.

If Sherlock had been involved in Sanchez’ death – and, according to himself, he definitely has been – then he did it for John. And he offered Sanchez more than John had been offered. Sanchez had been offered a chance to escape, which John never got. Sherlock might have been raging, but he had not been cruel.

But the things he did out of love – they seem terrifying to John now. Is that how it feels like to be loved by Sherlock Holmes? Is that what Sherlock does out of love?

oOo

It takes John a moment to push open the door to the roof because the icy wind is pushing against it. With a minimal amount of force he manages, though, and the wind bites into his face mercilessly when he steps out onto the rooftop. The wind is lashing at him relentlessly, so very different from the relatively nice day Sherlock chose to end his life.

When he left Molly a couple of minutes ago, he was so deep in thoughts that he didn’t even realize his feet were carrying him up the stairs to the highest point of St. Barth’s until he stood in front of the metal door. The only other time he’d been up there had been shortly after Sherlock’s supposed death. He’d stared down on the street from the edge and wondered, for just a moment, what Sherlock had felt in his last seconds, before he’d spread his arms and dived for his death.

Right now, though, with the wind nagging at him, John doesn’t dare to go too close to the edge. As it is, he feels the nervousness gnaw at his insides, remembering too well how Sherlock looked standing there, remembering too well that this is the place where his whole life temporarily went to hell (until Sanchez drugged him, which is an altogether different kind of hell but no less hellish after all). The air tastes of winter.

Sherlock kills out of love, or at least if he cares. And he doesn’t seem to make differences between himself or other people.

John goes home, with a foot in his hands and winter in his bones.

oOo

When Sherlock looks up, the room is dark, the fire is only a memory – the igneous coal barely powerful enough to give off a soft orange glow – and there’s a foot in a cool box sitting on the coffee table.

John has been out and about all day and since it’s almost midnight now, he’s most likely in bed. Sherlock thinks about playing the violin, but ultimately decides against it. He had been in the rare state of pleasant dreams and, in a childish attempt to go back to it, closes his eyes again. Not to sleep, mind you, but to dive back into the memories.

 

_Sherlock hates summer, but they have just caught another murderer, a man called Sanchez, and although his father had cursed them upon seeing his son led to the police car, John’s praise had drowned out the hateful words. They wander through Regent’s Park, the sun is shining and Sherlock should hate it, but John talks animatedly about the one thing or the other and maybe they have a quick snog against a tree._

_It’s perfect and Sherlock feels the summer in his bones._

oOo

_It starts with a kiss._

_Not slow and careful like one might expect, but a kiss that speaks of insecurity, of pain and of desperation. Too much teeth, too little alignment. And yet the most wonderful kiss they have ever experienced._

John, too far gone, too wrapped up in wave upon wave that hits him, speaks his own words aloud as he remembers them, out into his dark bedroom with only the small crescent shining in through the curtains as an observer and the howling wind as an answer.

“I need you,” he gasps, _along with memory-John who desperately tries to get closer and closer to Sherlock, tries to climb into him and feel him all around just so he never has to feel alone again. He means it in more than one sense - if anything he needs Sherlock_ to live.

_“I know,” Sherlock replies and John reflexively smacks him on the head. They both freeze, stare into each other’s eyes and an unabashed glee floods through John’s veins, while instead of an indignant grunt, a smirk slowly spreads on Sherlock’s face. His long fingers frame John’s face then and he laughs – laughs into another kiss and John has never heard something so beautiful in his life._

John, in the moonlight, pants heavily now, shortly breaking the surface of reality before he’s under again.

_“I need you,” Sherlock whispers into his mouth a long time later, quietly and with so much hesitation as if he’s selling state secrets. It’s one of the rare moments John will ever have him admit it and he treasures it in his heart, all while teasing him with a “I know” whispered back._

This is when John knows that Sherlock has never loved anyone before and will probably never love anyone like that again. He knows Sherlock loves him and the realization sets his heart pounding faster than a rabbits while a mixture between relief and panic rises in his chest. And the memories don’t stop.

_John goes to the pub with Lestrade, is properly angry about Sherlock’s fake death, but when he gets home some time early in the morning, Sherlock (while giving him disapproving looks that might be impressive if John wasn’t completely smashed) takes him to bed and stays with him._

_They don’t tell anyone, but Baker Street behind closed curtains is now an even bigger sanctuary than before._

_The Sanchez case is one in a million, nothing spectacular. They arrest the son, the father hurls insults and curses at them but that was to be expected after taking away his only son. Triple homicide and rape on at least four different occasions can result in that, surprisingly. Of course_ then _Javier Sanchez drugs John, he doesn’t even notice it until it’s too late. His world falls apart. And with John’s world, Sherlock’s too._

John remembers. All of it. Every single little thing, every touch, every word. He remembers his time with Sherlock, the time they spent as crime-fighters, best friends and lovers, he remembers falling asleep with the detective, remembers arguments about body parts in not-good places and mildew experiments in the bathroom, he remembers concerts on the violin – Sherlock scoffing about his music taste and nevertheless playing for him – and he remembers being so very in love that the simple thought of losing Sherlock again sends his leg and gunshot wound throbbing and his hands clench to fists.

And finally, in the middle of the night, with his two lives finally back in one piece, perfectly aligned, balanced and accepted, he realizes what Sanchez has not only done to him, but also to Sherlock.

His beautiful, wonderful, mad Sherlock.

John barely makes it to the small bathroom next to his room, the one he almost never uses in favour of the bigger bathroom downstairs, and after the retching finally subsides, he sits on the edge of the toilet seat, a shivering mess.

The small radio clock on his bedside table he can see through the door of the bathroom tells him it’s quarter to four in the morning. And quarter to four in the morning is when he finally gets up to go and find the man he’s lost along with his memory.

oOo

Sherlock has a light sleep, but even if he didn’t, it would have been hard not to hear John approach his room. The detective had only gone to bed about half an hour ago and found himself restlessly staring at the ceiling, all the while debating to get up again and do something productive. Now John’s steps come closer and... stop in front of Sherlock’s bedroom door.

Finally, there’s a hesitant knock. Sherlock debates with himself to pretend to be asleep, but that is highly unlikely – even if he had been, he’d be awake now. So he sits up and calls out: “Come in.”

John moves like in a dream, careful – not because of the darkness (there is light enough coming in through the window because Sherlock couldn’t be bothered to close the curtains), but as if any quick movement might break a spell or be too much. He stands, indecisively, while Sherlock observes him silently. Finally, he sits down at the edge of the bed. Sherlock doesn’t comment on it.

There have been nights like these, before. Nights when Sherlock’s brain was keeping him up and John would get up, make tea, and sit with him until he felt he could maybe go to sleep for a few hours. However, now John is the one who looks like he could need tea. Not that Sherlock will get up and make some.

Instead, he says: “Nightmare? I heard you upstairs.” John displays all the signs of distress, complete with a careful favouring of his good leg and desperate attempts at keeping his breath even.

“No, actually-“ John tries, but stops himself, shaking his head. He takes long, very long, to find the words he seems to be looking for and Sherlock grows impatient, but when his best friend finally looks up and fixes his eyes on him in the semi-darkness, completely focusing on him for the first time since he came in, Sherlock’s heartbeat speeds up.

He is- Can he? Does he-

Sherlock doesn’t want to get his hopes up. He’s not... he’s not getting his hopes up because that’s not something the great Sherlock Holmes does. It’s not- he doesn’t.

“I’m... so sorry, Sherlock,” John says, his eyes shining in the darkness, and all Sherlock can do is blink slowly. He remains silent, simply staring at John, because he can’t possibly say anything to that. So John continues. “I remember it. Everything. I can’t believe I- God, I’m so sorry. You loved me and I- I never meant to hurt you.”

John rambles and still Sherlock can’t begin to think of what to say, mostly because his brain is short-circuiting right now and he has closed the chapter on John, he really has – except he absolutely hasn’t and never will and John is sitting there and-

“It’s... not your fault.” He cringes at his own voice, so flat and not at all expressing what he means to say. Which is ‘How could you?’ and ‘It’s your fault I felt like shit’ and ‘I thought you loved me’. Because, apparently, not even the great Sherlock Holmes can think rationally when it comes to being hurt. He is hurt like normal, dull people are, and he doesn’t want to tell other people it’s not their fault when it _clearly_ is – but that’s what you do, so he does, and it’s _not what he wants to say._

Sherlock turns out to be human after all.

 

_“You’re the worst liar,” John says with a laugh and kisses a pouting Sherlock on the corner of his mouth._

_“I have you know that actually I’m very skilled at conjuring up an alternate truth and, as you call it plainly, ‘lie’,” Sherlock answers prickly, addressing John’s assessment._

_“Maybe with other people, but I can tell when you’re lying about how you feel about something,” John smirks. “You’re annoyed with Mrs. Hudson and that’s why you’re not accepting her biscuits. Nothing of that ‘You don’t like biscuits’ nonsense.”_

_“I’m not annoyed with Mrs. Hudson! It’s not her fault the dry cleaners destroyed my dressing gown,” Sherlock argues back petulantly._

_“And yet you blame her because she took it there in the first place. Now, stop being huffy and have a biscuit.”_

_“I don’t want one.”_

_“And you’re lying again...”_

 

“You’re the worst liar,” John says almost fondly but with a sad smile and Sherlock tries to conjure up the outrage he would normally feel. It’s not necessarily working, but his reply is hateful nonetheless.

“Well, _you_ are the worst person to be in a romantic relationship with.”

John stiffens up and Sherlock, through all his sorrow and anger, regrets having said that instantly. Arguing logically, all of what had happened had not been John’s fault.

“I know. But... I just- I came here to tell you how sorry I am. I- I forgot you and I was so confused that I didn’t see clearly how, uh, how much you were suffering and what I was missing, too.” John sounds as distressed as Sherlock is feeling, which soothes him a bit, but the words still mean nothing. They don’t change anything, after all.

“Not confused enough to go and marry _her_.”

He’s being unfair, he knows he is. But if John wants a chance to say what he has to say, then he gets to do the same.

John has the decency to look ashamed, but his eyes once again find Sherlock’s and there is a trace of defiance in them, as well. “I- Mary meant a lot to me. I realize now that this was maybe just my consciousness trying to find... well, you-“

Sherlock is not going to let these words get to him, he’s not going to, he’s _not_.

“- but Mary was important to me. But... you are, too. After her death I came back to you, because you are where I feel complete. And I will always come back to you. I won’t ever leave you, if- if that’s what you want.” John stops, then starts again. “I understand that maybe I’ve hurt you too much and if you want me gone I’ll- I’ll go. But... I do love you, and, in a way, I have always loved you even when it, uh, didn’t seem like it. I just... want you to know that. I can’t change the past, but it just feels right to tell you. I-“ When he stops this time, he doesn’t start again.

Sherlock sits, frozen. Following logic, he should tell John to leave. At the very least his bedroom. He could never ask John to leave Baker Street, not when Baker Street – and Sherlock – without John is impossible to imagine. But he should tell John that he can’t, won’t forgive him. He should.

“I don’t know anything about love. Mrs. Hudson’s movies made it seem like even a drug would not stop the tedious hero from coming back to his wife. Of course that is completely unrealistic, but the part of me that is influenced by the destructive forces of what is called love waited for it,” Sherlock tells John who remains silent, ashamed. “You- you turned me into a creature of sentiment-“ (not exactly true because Sherlock has – even without knowing how to label it back then – loved his John for a long time) “-and then left me alone to deal with it. My behaviour patterns changed drastically.” He knows sounding annoyed won’t help, but it’s all he can feel right now.

“I know- I know all of this!” John helplessly says, looking up from beneath his lashes and just as broken as Sherlock feels. “But it took me over two years to finally realize I loved you the first time around- how was I supposed to realize it any faster this time without the knowledge of all our time together? I didn’t know you when I woke up. I didn’t know how brilliant you were.”

And Sherlock can’t help but smile, a small smile but an honest one nevertheless. “You are rather ignorant, I agree.”

John huffs a quiet laugh, but it sounds like he didn’t even expect to make that sound ever again so Sherlock feels rightfully brilliant for having evoked it. They grin at each other and for a second it’s like it’s always been, happy, relaxed, easy. That is, until John slowly gets a bit more serious again, although his eyes are still soft.

“I, uh, leave you to it, then. Just... tell me if you need me to do anything. Or, uhm, go.” He clears his throat and gets up slowly. When he’s almost at the door, he turns back and gives Sherlock a genuine smile which the detective treasures in the John-corner of his mind-palace. “It’s just... good to remember. You. Us, I mean. I’m... glad.”

And then he’s gone. Sherlock’s brain, usually working at high speed seems to have stuttered to a complete halt at some point during this whole otherworldly scene and it takes him a couple of seconds to reboot it. He still feels... angry and betrayed. Torn. He realizes he should let John go, should close that chapter. John would be most effective again now, with the last gaps in his memories closed. They could lead a life of crime-solving and tea-drinking. It would be good.

Sherlock tried to love someone and it ended badly. No need of a repetition. They can be friends, best friends, because that worked before and will work now, too.

Except- Sherlock is so very in love that the thought of doing that seems completely absurd. If love is his drug than he will give in to his addiction, like the good addict he is. He always was an addict and he always will be. And he’s always been selfish, so what would be more selfish than to keep John, all to himself, forever?

The thought of John and forever firmly edged into his mind, he fights his way out of the sheet pooled around his waist. He almost trips over his nightstand and the mess his last experiment has created on the floor, but he doesn’t let that stop him from hurrying after John. His John, who said he was sorry, who meant it, who came back to him, finally.

“John!” he calls, sparing no thought to the early morning hour and Mrs. Hudson downstairs trying to sleep. Because John, already at the steps leading up to his room stops in his tracks and turns, his face tired and lined with his emotional turmoil.

“Present tense, John!” Sherlock tells him and realizes almost immediately that John is, as usual, unable to follow his track of thoughts. “Not past tense. Don’t say that I ‘loved you’,” he elaborates quickly. “Present tense!”

And finally, John understands and the smile that spreads on his face is the most wonderful thing Sherlock has ever seen.

He grins, because the sight even beats Mycroft wearing a wetsuit.

John grins back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Some quotes taken from John's blog.  
> Please leave a comment/kudos if you liked this.  
> Yours, Hanna


End file.
